McPherson Governance Connector for OpenClaw

Version 0.6.2 — account-free local governance diagnostics.

This package is the distributed McPherson Governance OpenClaw plugin. It is not the McPherson Governance monorepo: it contains the connector runtime, the V6 local diagnostics CLI, the runtime modules those two need, the JSON schema contracts they read, public documentation, and self-verification tooling.

What it does

Installed into an OpenClaw profile, it gives you a local, private workflow:

• Account-free local agent and tool discovery from your own OpenClaw gateway metadata.
• Non-authoritative AutoMap proposals for the capabilities it discovers.
• A Governability Diagnosis of how much of your local surface could be governed.
• Private JSON and Markdown reports written 0600 under a directory you choose.

What it does not require

No McPherson account. No email verification. No MFA. No organization, no workspace, no installation pairing. No McPherson API key. No billing, no credits. No dashboard login. No hosted SaaS availability.

The connected dashboard beta is a separate product path and is not required for, and does not gate, local V6 use.

Fixed safety boundary

• The connector does not block, approve, deny, delay, or rewrite any tool call. It has no policy evaluator and no gate.
• Remote decisions cannot alter tool execution. There is no code path from a remote response to a change in what a tool does.
• AutoMap proposals cannot activate themselves. Their status is PROPOSED. Promoting a proposal is a separate, human, out-of-band decision.
• The single exception to "never blocks" is the operator-enabled, exact-match local canary tool, which exists so you can prove the hook is installed. It reads no remote data.

Unconfigured tools make no network request

If a tool has no complete configured metadata in your connector configuration:

• it remains local;
• no HTTPS request occurs;
• the receipt records remote_status: NOT_ATTEMPTED;
• the receipt records local_disposition: SKIPPED;
• tool execution is unchanged;
• no fallback metadata reaches the wire or the receipt ledger.

Earlier releases described unmapped tools as normally producing remote registry 404 observations. That is not V6 behavior — see LIMITATIONS.md §4 for the corrected description and the one case where a 404 can still legitimately appear.

Requirements

• OpenClaw 2026.6.5 or newer. This minimum is source-owned and enforced by the connector itself at activation time. See INSTALL.md for the exact provenance of that number.
• For live observation, one of three exact audited builds. Support is exact-target based, not range-based: 2026.6.5 (5181e4f) and 2026.6.33 (7af0cfc, extended-stable) are both live-lifecycle proven, with 2026.6.33 preferred. 2026.7.1-2 (0790d9f) is target-bound and installable but not live-observation supported. Live observation refuses every other build. See LIMITATIONS.md.
• Node.js 22 or newer (the V6 diagnostics CLI requires it).
• No third-party dependencies. Every import resolves to a sibling module in this package or to a Node.js built-in.

Quick start

PROFILE=my-profile
PROFILE_HOME=/absolute/physical/path/to/the/openclaw-home
OPENCLAW="$PROFILE_HOME/.local/bin/openclaw"
PROFILE_STATE="$PROFILE_HOME/.openclaw-$PROFILE"
PACKAGE_ROOT=/absolute/path/to/the/verified/package
clawhub package download @mcphersonai/mcpherson-governance-openclaw \
  --version 0.6.2 --output ./mcpherson-governance-download
clawhub package verify \
  ./mcpherson-governance-download/mcphersonai-mcpherson-governance-openclaw-0.6.2.tgz \
  --package @mcphersonai/mcpherson-governance-openclaw --version 0.6.2
env HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" OPENCLAW_HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" \
  "$OPENCLAW" --profile "$PROFILE" plugins install \
  ./mcpherson-governance-download/mcphersonai-mcpherson-governance-openclaw-0.6.2.tgz
env HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" OPENCLAW_HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" \
  "$OPENCLAW" --profile "$PROFILE" config set \
  plugins.entries.mcpherson-governance-connector.config \
  '{"enabled":false}' --strict-json
env HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" OPENCLAW_HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" \
  "$OPENCLAW" --profile "$PROFILE" config validate
env HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" OPENCLAW_HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" \
  "$OPENCLAW" --profile "$PROFILE" plugins inspect mcpherson-governance-connector
env HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" OPENCLAW_HOME="$PROFILE_HOME" \
  "$OPENCLAW" --profile "$PROFILE" plugins disable mcpherson-governance-connector

Download, verify, then install the verified .tgz — the same install contract as v0.5.1. Full steps and expected install warnings are in INSTALL.md.

enabled: false is the default and keeps remote shadow off. The local V6 diagnostics workflow runs with the connector disabled.

Then follow the account-free SecretRef and local loopback-health identity bootstrap in INSTALL.md §4.1. It uses the exact named profile, requires no remote service or account, and must complete before binding. The binding pins the exact profile-local ledger under $PROFILE_STATE/mcpherson-governance-connector/receipts/.

Run the local workflow using the full commands in INSTALL.md:

node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" init-profile-binding ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" verify-profile-binding ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" observe-live ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" verify-observation ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" discover ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" propose ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" govern ...
node "$PACKAGE_ROOT/scripts/governance-diagnostics.mjs" render-diagnosis ...

Verify what you installed

npm run verify

This checks the packaged file inventory against PACKAGE-FILES.sha256, the declared identities, and the safety constants. See VERIFY.md.

Documents

Security

To report a suspected vulnerability, email admin@mcphersonai.com privately. Please do not open a public issue for suspected security vulnerabilities. See SECURITY.md.

What this package is not

It does not include, and this license does not grant rights to, the hosted McPherson Governance API, the McPherson Governance Dashboard, Observa commercial services, the commercial control plane, or v0.7 enforcement. Those are separate works and are not distributed here. See NOTICE.

License

Apache License 2.0. Copyright 2026 McPherson AI LLC. See LICENSE and NOTICE.