How Decionis compares to alternatives

Question 1

How is Decionis different from ServiceNow IRM?

Accepted Answer

ServiceNow IRM is designed for integrated risk management across a broad enterprise workflow estate. Decionis is narrower and more execution-focused: it sits between decision systems and execution systems as the control plane that gives your team an answer before actions occur.

Question 2

Who is Decionis for in this comparison?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is for teams that already know the risky action path and need a deterministic execution gate in front of it, especially in finance, procurement, and operations.

Question 3

Why would a CFO choose Decionis over ServiceNow IRM?

Accepted Answer

A CFO chooses Decionis when the priority is reducing preventable execution loss, proving why a transaction or approval happened, and moving faster than a platform-scale IRM rollout.

Question 4

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not a full enterprise workflow and GRC suite. If the main requirement is broad program management across many governance domains inside ServiceNow, ServiceNow IRM is broader. If the main requirement is a deterministic execution gate before money moves or system state changes, Decionis is more direct.

Question 5

How is Decionis different from IBM OpenPages?

Accepted Answer

IBM OpenPages is a broader GRC platform for managing governance and risk programs. Decionis is purpose-built for one narrower job: giving your team execution authority before approvals, routing, or spend are committed.

Question 6

Why would a CFO choose Decionis over IBM OpenPages?

Accepted Answer

A CFO chooses Decionis when the main business case is execution safety, audit-grade justification, and rapid workflow control instead of a broader GRC transformation program.

Question 7

How does setup compare?

Accepted Answer

Start with a quick diagnostic, then run your own workflow in Shadow Mode. OpenPages is better suited when your organization is ready for a larger GRC operating model.

Question 8

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not a full GRC operating system. If your requirement is broad risk inventory, program administration, and enterprise compliance workflows, OpenPages offers more breadth. If your requirement is pre-execution enforcement with signed audit artifacts, Decionis is the narrower and stronger fit.

Question 9

How is Decionis different from Alloy?

Accepted Answer

Alloy is built for identity and fraud prevention, onboarding, monitoring, and credit decisioning in financial services. Decionis is built to govern whether a business action should execute at all under institutional policy, with one enforceable verdict: execute, block, escalate, or deliberately hold action across finance, procurement, risk, operations, and AI-driven workflows.

Question 10

Who is Decionis for in this comparison?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is for enterprise teams in finance, procurement, risk, and operations that need deterministic control over approvals, spending, routing, and workflow execution. Alloy is stronger when identity risk and fraud operations are the center of gravity.

Question 11

Can Decionis and Alloy coexist?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Alloy can govern identity and fraud risk inside customer lifecycle flows, while Decionis can govern downstream operational and financial execution where enterprise policy, auditability, and kill-switch control still matter.

Question 12

Why would a CFO choose Decionis over Alloy?

Accepted Answer

A CFO chooses Decionis when the risk sits in execution itself: purchase approvals, payment release, vendor actions, workflow routing, or other business actions that need deterministic control before value moves.

Question 13

How is Decionis different from Guardrails AI?

Accepted Answer

Guardrails AI focuses on developer-layer validation around model behavior. Decionis operates at the business execution layer, where policy, accountability, financial consequences, and system state changes matter.

Question 14

Who is Decionis for in this comparison?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is for operators, finance teams, procurement leaders, and risk owners who need execution authority around the action that follows an AI suggestion.

Question 15

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not a replacement for developer guardrail tooling around every model call. Teams building agent systems may still use both.

Question 16

Why would a CFO choose Decionis?

Accepted Answer

A CFO cares less about model syntax validation and more about whether a decision can execute without violating policy or creating loss. That is Decionis' core job.

Question 17

How is Decionis different from Check Point (Lakera)?

Accepted Answer

Check Point's AI security judges behaviour and content inside the AI layer, in real time, and records what it detected. Decionis judges the action against the organisation's policy from outside the application that proposed it, refuses or holds it rather than scoring it, and records what was permitted — policy version, inputs, verdict, approver — in a signed dossier that someone who does not run Decionis can re-derive.

Question 18

Is Decionis 'outcome control'?

Accepted Answer

Outcome control needs an outcome you can point to afterwards. A detection log inside a security platform says what was judged; a signed, re-derivable decision record says what was permitted, under which rule, and by whom — and it is portable, so a bank, a buyer or an auditor can check it without an account on either platform. If outcome control means governing what an agent does rather than what it says, that is the question Decionis answers per action.

Question 19

Who is Decionis for here?

Accepted Answer

Teams whose agents already take consequential actions — spend, deploy, refund, change production state — and who need those actions authorised against policy with proof, whatever guardrails sit on the model.

Question 20

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not an AI threat-detection or prompt-defence platform, and it is not part of a broader security suite. If your priority is securing the models and applications themselves, Check Point's AI security is closer to that problem — and a guardrail verdict from it can be read into a Decionis evaluation as evidence.

Question 21

How is Decionis different from LangChain Guardrails?

Accepted Answer

LangChain Guardrails is aimed at application builders adding guardrails to AI workflows. Decionis is aimed at enterprise teams that need execution authority and audit-grade justification once a decision reaches the business layer and is about to affect a real workflow, payment, approval, or state change.

Question 22

Can teams use both?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A team can use LangChain Guardrails at the model and agent layer, then use Decionis to determine whether a financial or operational action is allowed to execute.

Question 23

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not a general-purpose developer middleware library. If your main job is building agent infrastructure, LangChain Guardrails is closer to that need.

Question 24

Why would a CFO choose Decionis?

Accepted Answer

A CFO chooses Decionis because it creates deterministic control over execution, accountability, and audit evidence rather than only improving application-layer safety.

Question 25

How is Decionis different from Cohere Health?

Accepted Answer

Cohere Health operates inside the clinical decision: it produces evidence-based prior authorization and medical-necessity recommendations. Decionis operates one layer over: it does not diagnose or determine medical necessity. It governs whether the action that follows a recommendation is authorized to execute under institutional policy, verifies the right approval authority, and signs the reasoning into a portable Decision Dossier for audit.

Question 26

Can Decionis and Cohere Health run together?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Cohere Health can generate the prior authorization recommendation while Decionis governs the execution boundary around it — confirming the licensed-clinician gate where the law requires one, routing escalations, and producing the signed audit dossier. Decionis is engine-agnostic: it can sit around any utilization-management or prior-authorization system rather than replacing it.

Question 27

Who is Decionis for in this comparison?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is for the compliance, governance, and operations owners who must prove who approved an action and on what basis — across referral, prior authorization, and procurement workflows — not only for the clinical team producing the recommendation. It is deployed shadow-mode-first so governance value is observed before any enforcement.

Question 28

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not a clinical-intelligence or medical-necessity engine and does not author coverage criteria. If the need is the clinical recommendation, a utilization-management product such as Cohere Health is the fit. If the need is execution authority, escalation routing, and a portable, tamper-evident audit trail across workflows, Decionis is the control plane.

Question 29

Can't I just use Shopify's native discount combinations and limits?

Accepted Answer

For simple static caps, yes. But native combination rules don't know your cost basis, so they can't enforce a true net-margin floor — a 40%-off rule still ships a loss on a low-margin SKU. They also don't verify that the cost a pricing app pulled matches your ERP, and don't leave a signed, portable receipt of what was held and why. Decionis adds the margin math, the cost-basis truth check (Gate 1), and the signed Decision Dossier.

Question 30

Doesn't a custom Shopify Function or Script already do this?

Accepted Answer

A custom Function can express a threshold, but you then own the cost-basis sourcing, the fail-closed behavior, the audit trail, the cross-channel inventory truth, and the read-only rollout — and you maintain it. Decionis ships those as a governed product: a deterministic Function plus admission gate, real unit-cost evaluation, a tamper-evident Execution Ledger, and a one-click monitor→enforce toggle with a kill switch.

Question 31

How does Decionis prove value before I trust it to block checkouts?

Accepted Answer

It installs in read-only Shadow Mode and evaluates your real orders, discounts, and price changes — or your last 14 days on demand — recording what it would have caught into a Drift Report. The dollars at risk are computed from your real cost data (with a clearly-labeled estimate where cost is missing, never a fabricated number). Native rules give you no equivalent before-enforcement evidence.

Question 32

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is a margin and pricing-integrity control plane, not a merchandising or repricing engine and not a fraud tool — it governs the floor around your pricing decisions, it doesn't make them. If your needs are met by static native discount caps with no cost-basis verification or audit requirement, native Shopify controls are simpler. If you run dynamic/AI pricing where a drift can leak real money, Decionis is the deterministic guard.

Question 33

Isn't Agentis already a margin governance layer that blocks orders at checkout?

Accepted Answer

Agentis positions itself that way — it markets real-time, COGS-aware margin-floor enforcement that blocks orders at checkout plus MAP enforcement. Decionis governs more than margin: one deterministic gate evaluates coupon-stacking, the net-margin floor, multi-channel over-selling, and AI agent actions in a single pass, so you don't stitch together separate tools or accept that only the margin dimension is guarded.

Question 34

Agentis says it keeps an audit trail per evaluation. How is a Decision Dossier different?

Accepted Answer

An audit trail records that a decision happened. A Decionis Decision Dossier is a signed, non-repudiable artifact — cryptographically sealed with an Ed25519 signature and reproducible — so a third party (finance, a card network, a dispute reviewer) can independently verify the exact policy version, inputs, and margin math that produced the verdict. Agentis markets a per-evaluation audit trail; Decionis produces portable, verifiable proof rather than a log entry you have to trust.

Question 35

Is Decionis AI-powered like Agentis?

Accepted Answer

No, and that is deliberate. Agentis markets itself as AI-powered. Decionis is deterministic: the same order, cost basis, and policy version always produce the same verdict, with p95 decision compute under 120ms. Determinism is what makes the Decision Dossier reproducible and what lets finance and disputes rely on it — a probabilistic model can't offer the same non-repudiable guarantee.

Question 36

How do I evaluate Decionis versus Agentis without a sales cycle?

Accepted Answer

Decionis installs in self-serve, read-only Shadow Mode first — no demo, no checkout changes. It evaluates your real orders, discounts, and price changes and records what it would have caught, so you see the dollars at risk before you enforce anything, and every rule is reversible per rule. You can compare the actual before-enforcement evidence rather than a scripted walkthrough.

Question 37

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is deterministic execution authority, not an AI repricing or merchandising engine — it governs the gate around your pricing and fulfillment decisions, it doesn't make them. If your need is narrowly a margin floor and MAP enforcement and a per-evaluation log is enough, Agentis positions itself for that. If you need one gate across coupon-stacking, margin, over-selling, and AI agent actions with signed, reproducible proof, Decionis is the deterministic guard.

Question 38

Isn’t Runta already the execution layer for AI agents?

Accepted Answer

Runta governs the compute environment — the process, network egress, and credentials the agent runs with. It knows whether a network call goes to an approved endpoint; it does not know whether “refund $4,000” or “run payroll” is allowed under your policy. Decionis governs the decision at the semantic execution boundary: it intercepts and consumes the action inline — an ISO-8583 payment-authorization message, a native bot action, a workflow pre-commit hook — and returns a policy verdict before the action continues. Different layers of the same stack; they compose rather than compete.

Question 39

Runta caps agent spend and records what agents do. How is Decionis different?

Accepted Answer

A spend cap is a dollar ceiling on a process. A Decionis verdict evaluates the specific business action against your org’s policy bundle — coupon-stacking, the net-margin floor, a duplicate invoice, payroll variance — and returns authorize / block / escalate / restrain before the action runs. And Runta’s execution records are process replay; a Decision Dossier is a signed, reproducible Ed25519 artifact a third party (finance, a card network, a dispute reviewer) can verify offline against a public JWKS. One is a trace you have to trust; the other is portable proof.

Question 40

Does Decionis sandbox or isolate the agent like Runta does?

Accepted Answer

No — that is deliberately Runta’s job. Decionis is not a hypervisor, sandbox, or egress firewall. It sits at the action boundary and issues a single-use, action-bound execution grant that the downstream system requires before the action commits, so an allow cannot be replayed. Containment of the runtime and authorization of the action are different controls; a mature deployment uses both.

Question 41

Can Decionis and Runta work together?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and that is the intended shape. An agent running inside a Runta microVM, about to take a consequential action, calls Decionis for the policy verdict and a signed execution grant. Runta contains where the agent runs; Decionis authorizes what it is allowed to do and proves the verdict. Runtime isolation sits beneath a decision-authority layer.

Question 42

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis will not isolate a process, restrict network egress, or keep raw credentials out of a runtime — pair it with a runtime-isolation layer for that. What Decionis does that a sandbox structurally cannot is understand the business content of an action and produce a signed, reproducible verdict at the point of execution. If you need process containment, that is Runta’s scope; if you need to govern and prove the business decision, that is Decionis.

Question 43

How is Decionis different from Signifyd?

Accepted Answer

They solve different problems that get conflated as 'we're losing money on orders.' Signifyd is designed to stop fraudulent orders and shift chargeback liability using a probabilistic identity and risk score. Decionis stops good-faith margin leakage on legitimate orders — coupon-stacking, price drift, AI pricing that drifts below cost, and over-selling — deterministically, and signs a Decision Dossier for each held order. Fraud is about who is placing the order; margin governance is about whether a legitimate order ships below your floor.

Question 44

We already run Signifyd. Do we still need Decionis?

Accepted Answer

Often yes, because a passing fraud check does not mean the order protects margin. A genuine customer stacking three valid coupons, or an AI pricing tool that drifted below cost, produces a clean, non-fraudulent order that Signifyd is not designed to hold. Decionis governs that margin dimension and leaves signed proof, so the two can run side by side — fraud screening on identity, Decionis on margin, coupon, over-sell, and AI pricing risk.

Question 45

Is Decionis probabilistic like a fraud score?

Accepted Answer

No. Fraud platforms are typically probabilistic by design — they estimate the likelihood a transaction is fraudulent. Decionis is deterministic: the same order, verified cost basis, and policy version always produce the same verdict, which is what makes the Decision Dossier reproducible and independently verifiable by finance or a dispute reviewer.

Question 46

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is not a fraud, chargeback-guarantee, or identity-risk platform and does not assume chargeback liability. If the core need is stopping fraudulent orders and transferring chargeback risk, a fraud tool such as Signifyd, Riskified, or Forter is the fit. If the core need is preventing margin loss on legitimate orders with signed, auditable proof, Decionis is the deterministic guard.

Question 47

We already pull a margin report. Isn't that enough?

Accepted Answer

A report tells you margin leaked after it already shipped — usually days or weeks later, once the order, discount, or price change is final and the money is gone. Decionis moves the same margin math to the moment of checkout and blocks the below-floor order inline, then signs a Decision Dossier as proof. Reporting is detection; Decionis is prevention. Most teams keep the report for analysis and add Decionis for the inline control.

Question 48

Can't we just alert on the dashboard faster?

Accepted Answer

Faster alerts still fire after the order commits, so the loss is already booked by the time anyone reads them — and they typically require a human to notice, interpret, and chase it. Decionis evaluates each order deterministically at execution time and either allows, holds, or flags it before it ships, so prevention does not depend on someone watching a dashboard.

Question 49

How is the proof different from a BI export?

Accepted Answer

A BI export is a retrospective calculation you have to trust and reconcile. A Decionis Decision Dossier is a signed, reproducible artifact sealed at the moment of the decision — it records the exact inputs, cost basis, policy version, and margin math that produced the verdict, so finance or a dispute reviewer can independently verify what was held and why rather than re-deriving it from a spreadsheet.

Question 50

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is an execution-time control plane, not a BI or analytics suite — it is not designed to replace your warehouse, ad-hoc SQL, or dashboards for exploration and reporting. If the need is retrospective analysis and slicing, a margin report is the right tool. If the need is preventing below-floor orders inline with signed proof, Decionis is the deterministic guard that runs before the report ever records the loss.

Question 51

Can't a custom Shopify Function already reject the order at checkout?

Accepted Answer

Yes — Functions and the Validation APIs can reject an order at checkout. The gap is everything around the rule: with a Function you build and maintain the margin math yourself, you source and verify the cost basis yourself. Decionis ships that as a governed product: a deterministic gate with a verified cost basis, a signed policy snapshot that keeps enforcing during an outage, and a signed Decision Dossier per held order.

Question 52

What does Decionis give me that my own Function doesn't?

Accepted Answer

A verified cost basis (rather than whatever number your code happens to read), a signed, reproducible Decision Dossier that finance or a dispute reviewer can independently verify, cross-channel and ERP coverage instead of Shopify-only logic, and a governed monitor→enforce toggle with a kill switch and audit record. A custom Function is unsigned bespoke code with none of those guarantees unless you build and maintain them yourself.

Question 53

Isn't building it ourselves cheaper?

Accepted Answer

The first version looks cheap; the ongoing cost is ownership. You maintain the cost-basis sourcing, the fail-closed behavior, the audit trail, the cross-channel inventory truth, and the read-only rollout as Shopify's APIs and your catalog evolve. Decionis is designed to provide those as a maintained product, so the margin math and its signed proof are not one more bespoke system your team has to keep alive.

Question 54

What are the tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is a governed margin and pricing-integrity control plane, not a developer framework — if your requirement is genuinely a single static Shopify-only rule you are content to own, a custom Function is simpler. If you need a verified cost basis, fail-closed behavior, a signed non-repudiable Decision Dossier, and cross-surface coverage, Decionis is the build-vs-buy answer that avoids maintaining unsigned bespoke code.

Question 55

Isn't an authorization decision just fine-grained access control?

Accepted Answer

Access control asks whether a principal may perform a class of operation, and answers once, in advance, from a scope or a role. That is the right shape for a capability and the wrong shape for a limit that depends on the instance: “may issue refunds” cannot express “may issue this refund, for this amount, on this order.” The gap shows up in incidents where every access check passed and the action was still wrong — the AWS Cost Explorer outage is the clearest public example, where an agent's change did not trigger the peer review a person making the same change would have needed.

Question 56

Okta and Entra both ship agent identity now. Doesn't that cover it?

Accepted Answer

It covers the half they are for, and it makes Decionis more useful rather than less. Okta's Agent SSO gives an agent a first-class identity at the point of connection; Auth0's Token Vault holds the third-party tokens an agent acts with. An agent with a real identity, scoped credentials and a lifecycle is a precondition for reasoning about what it does; without one you are gating an anonymous caller. What agent identity does not do is evaluate the proposed action against the organisation's own policy and produce evidence of that evaluation. The two compose: identity establishes the principal, Decionis decides the action.

Question 57

What are the honest tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

Decionis is narrow. It does not do authentication, SSO, directory, provisioning, lifecycle or conditional access, and every organisation needs those from someone. It is also a far smaller company than either, which is a real consideration for a control in a critical path — the mitigation is that its evidence does not depend on it: a Decision Dossier re-derives from the policy and the inputs, so the record outlives the vendor relationship.

Question 58

Both sit outside the application and answer allow or deny. What is different?

Accepted Answer

The input and the output. Their input is a principal, an action verb and a resource; ours is a proposed action with its own facts — what it costs, what it changes, what it is worth after every discount. Their output is a boolean the application acts on; ours is a three-way verdict whose middle value holds the action for a named person, plus a signed record that re-derives independently. Neither claims to block a tool call before it executes and produce evidence of the block, which is the specific job here.

Question 59

Could we express a margin floor as an authorization policy?

Accepted Answer

Not usefully. A permission model answers over relationships and attributes it already holds; a margin floor is arithmetic over cost, discounts, shipping and channel fees at the instant of checkout, and those facts are not in the authorization service. You could pass them in — and then you have built the harder half yourself, the interception point, the fact gathering, the escalation path and the evidence, with a permission engine in the middle doing the easy part.

Question 60

What are the honest tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

If the problem really is per-resource permissions, Decionis is the wrong shape and these are better tools with better ergonomics for it. Many teams need both, and the split is clean: the authorization service decides who may see and edit, Decionis decides whether the consequential action they then take should proceed.

Question 61

Isn't Decionis just OPA with extra steps?

Accepted Answer

They overlap only at the middle: both evaluate rules and return a verdict. The differences are at the two ends OPA leaves to you. Upstream, Decionis ships the interception points — the checkout, the marketplace order, the agent tool call — so nothing reaches execution unevaluated. Downstream, every verdict is signed into a Decision Dossier that verifies independently, and an escalation becomes a human decision with the evidence attached rather than a denied request someone has to debug. With OPA you build both ends; that's by design — it is a policy engine, not execution authority.

Question 62

Can OPA produce the same evidence?

Accepted Answer

OPA emits decision logs you can collect, and they are useful operational telemetry. They are not signed, portable artifacts: a Decision Dossier is sealed at the moment of the decision with the policy version, inputs, and verdict, and a third party can verify it without access to your logging pipeline or trust in it. If a buyer, auditor, or dispute reviewer needs to check a single decision a year later, that difference is the whole job.

Question 63

We already run OPA for Kubernetes. Do we replace it?

Accepted Answer

No — keep it. OPA governing your infrastructure and Decionis governing your business actions is the natural split: admission control stays in Rego where platform engineers own it, and the actions that move money or commit orders go through Decionis where operators set the rules and every verdict leaves signed proof. The two never contend for the same decision.

Question 64

What are the honest tradeoffs?

Accepted Answer

OPA is more general, free to run, CNCF-governed, and has a large ecosystem — and it asks you to write Rego, build the enforcement wiring, and assemble your own evidence story. Decionis is narrower on purpose: business actions, built-in surfaces, human escalation, and signed evidence, priced as a product. Teams with strong platform engineering and infra-shaped policies lean OPA; teams whose risk lives in checkouts, payments, and agent actions lean Decionis; many run both.

Comparison area	Decionis	Alloy
Primary job	Policy-gated execution before operational or financial action	Identity, fraud, compliance, and credit decisioning for financial services
Best fit for	CFO, COO, procurement, risk, and operations leaders	Fraud, compliance, onboarding, and fintech risk teams
Core artifact	Decision Dossier with policy proof and execution accountability	Identity and fraud workflows with configurable risk decisions
Tradeoff	Not an identity-verification or fraud-orchestration platform	Not a general enterprise execution authority layer
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Strong inside identity, fraud, and financial-services decisioning, but not a general execution gate for enterprise operational actions.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Focused on identity and fraud decision workflows rather than portable Decision Dossiers and org-level validation packs.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Strong for risk decisions in its domain, but not positioned as one cloud-agnostic certified verdict for broad enterprise execution.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Domain workflows can defer or challenge decisions, but deliberate hold logic for general enterprise execution is not the primary story.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Works in financial-services risk flows, but not as a general before-money-moves execution authority layer across procurement and operations.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Can integrate into cloud stacks, but Google Cloud / Vertex AI governance preservation is not the central positioning.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Operational controls exist in-domain, but org-wide and per-decision kill switches are not the main public execution-control proof.

Comparison area	Decionis	Okta and Microsoft Entra
The question answered	Should this specific action execute, now, under this policy?	Who is this principal, and what may they reach?
When it decides	At the moment the action is proposed, per action	At authentication and at access, per session or per resource
What it reasons over	The action's own facts — amount, margin, blast radius, counterparty change	Principal, device, location, risk signals, group and role membership
Held-for-approval state	ESCALATE routes to a named approver and nothing executes until they sign off	Step-up authentication challenges the principal; it does not hold the action for a second person
Per-decision evidence	A signed Decision Dossier a third party can re-derive without our systems	System logs of authentication and access events
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Access is gated; the action inside an authorised session is not evaluated.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Audit logs of sign-in and access events, not per-action decision records.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Risk scores drive authentication challenges, not action verdicts.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Conditional access can deny a session; it has no held-for-review state.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Identity is checked before the session; the payment inside it is not re-examined.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Disabling a principal stops everything it does, not one action.

Comparison area	Decionis	Oso and Cerbos
Subject of the decision	A proposed action and its consequences	A principal's permission over a resource
Typical question	Should this $4,200 refund be issued by this agent right now?	May this user edit this project?
Outcomes	ALLOW, ESCALATE to a named approver, or BLOCK, with reason codes	Allow or deny
Per-decision evidence	Signed Decision Dossier, re-derivable by a third party	Decision logs where the service provides them
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Gates access to resources; the action's own facts sit outside the model.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Authorization decision logs, not signed per-action artifacts.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Deterministic allow or deny; no held or graded outcome.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	No held-for-review state — a denial is final and immediate.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Answers whether a principal may call the endpoint, not whether this payment should go.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Revoking a role stops a class of access, not one action.

Comparison area	Decionis	WorkOS
The question answered	Should this specific action execute, now, under this policy?	Who is this principal, what may it reach, and what did it reach?
When it decides	At the moment the action is proposed, per action	At sign-in and at access, per session or per resource
What it reasons over	The action's own facts — amount, margin, blast radius, counterparty change	Principal, organisation, role and resource relationships
Held-for-approval state	ESCALATE routes to a named approver and nothing executes until they sign off	A permission check permits or denies; it does not hold the action for a second person
Record afterwards	A signed Decision Dossier per action, verifiable against a published key	Audit logs of identity and access events, kept by the platform
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Fine-grained authorization decides what a principal may do to a resource, ahead of time; it does not evaluate the instance of an action against policy at execution.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Audit logs of identity and access events rather than a portable, signed Decision Dossier a counterparty can re-derive.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Permit or deny on a permission check rather than one certified allow, escalate or block verdict carrying the policy version that produced it.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	No held-for-a-named-person state bound to a specific action.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Built as identity, authorization and audit infrastructure rather than as the authority step before money moves.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Credential revocation and access changes rather than org-wide and per-decision execution kill switches with an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Guardrails AI
Primary job	Control business execution with policy gates	Validate and constrain AI model behavior
Best fit for	Finance, operations, procurement, and risk leaders	Developers and ML platform teams
Core artifact	Decision Dossier and execution proof	Validation rules and structured output checks
Tradeoff	Less developer-SDK oriented	Not designed as business execution authority
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Not the primary job. Guardrails AI focuses on model validation and output control, not downstream business execution gating.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Validation rules and model controls rather than Decision Dossiers and audit-ready validation packs for high-stakes business action.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Model validation and structured outputs, not one confidence-scored certified execution verdict.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Can block or constrain model behavior, but deliberate do-nothing logic for business execution is outside the main product job.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Not positioned around before-money-moves execution control for finance, procurement, or operations.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Can be used in AI stacks, including Google Cloud, but not as the execution authority layer that preserves approvals and Decision Dossiers.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Model and application controls instead of org-wide and per-decision execution kill switches.

Comparison area	Decionis	Check Point (Lakera)
Primary job	Decide whether an action may execute, and prove the decision	Detect and stop threats to models and agents in real time
Where it sits	Outside the application, on the action's path before commit	Inside the AI stack, on the prompts, responses and behaviour
Core artifact	A signed Decision Dossier that re-derives without the vendor	Security events and detections inside the platform
Tradeoff	Not a threat-detection or prompt-defence platform	Not a per-action authority with a portable, verifiable record
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Real-time behavioural and content decisions inside the AI layer, not a policy gate on downstream business execution.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Detection and security-event records rather than a portable, signed Decision Dossier a counterparty can re-derive.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Detection outcomes and risk signals rather than one certified allow, escalate or block verdict per action carrying the policy version that produced it.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Blocks or flags on what it detects; no deliberate hold-for-a-named-person state bound to the action.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Built as AI security rather than as the authority step before money moves or state changes.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Integrates with Google Cloud's agent platform as a security control point, not as the execution authority holding approvals and Decision Dossiers.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Security policy controls rather than org-wide and per-decision execution kill switches with an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	LangChain Guardrails
Primary job	Policy-gated execution control	Developer guardrails for AI workflows
Best fit for	Enterprise operators and the people who own the budget	Developers and agent platform teams
Core artifact	Decision Dossier and policy proof	Workflow guardrails and middleware controls
Tradeoff	Less general-purpose for arbitrary agent stacks	Not built as CFO-grade execution authority
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Not the primary role. LangChain Guardrails focuses on developer middleware around models and agent workflows.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Workflow guardrails and middleware controls rather than Decision Dossiers and regulator-facing validation packs.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Guardrails around workflow behavior, not one confidence-scored certified verdict at the business action layer.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Can constrain AI workflow behavior, but deliberate hold logic for enterprise execution is not the core posture.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Not designed around before-money-moves governance for finance, procurement, and operations.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Can be used in AI stacks, but not as the cloud-agnostic execution authority layer preserving approval paths, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Developer middleware controls rather than org-wide and per-decision kill switches for high-stakes execution.

Comparison area	Decionis	ServiceNow IRM
Primary job	Deterministic execution control before money moves	Broad integrated risk management inside ServiceNow
Best fit for	CFO, COO, risk, procurement, and operations leaders	ServiceNow platform owners and enterprise governance teams
Core artifact	Decision Dossier with policy checks and execution proof	Risk workflows, control programs, and platform records
Tradeoff	Narrower than a full IRM suite	Heavier platform footprint for execution-specific use cases
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Not the primary focus. ServiceNow IRM is broader governance and workflow administration rather than a narrow action gate before every downstream step.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Broader risk records and platform workflows rather than a portable per-decision dossier plus validation-pack model.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Can support workflow decisions, but not positioned around one confidence-scored execution verdict at the action boundary.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Can model broader governance workflow states, but deliberate hold logic is not the core positioning.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Broader governance posture rather than a focused before-money-moves execution layer.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Can integrate in broad enterprise environments, but Google Cloud / Vertex AI governance fit is not the core positioning here.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Broader platform controls rather than explicit org-wide and per-decision kill switches as a primary public proof point.

Comparison area	Decionis	IBM OpenPages
Primary job	Enforce policy before execution	Manage governance, risk, and compliance programs
Speed to value	Quickstart, then Shadow Mode on your own workflow	Better for larger program rollouts
Decision artifact	Decision Dossier tied to execution	Broader GRC records and governance workflows
Tradeoff	Less broad than a full GRC suite	Broader but heavier for narrow execution control use cases
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	OpenPages is broader program governance, not primarily a real-time downstream action gate.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Broader GRC records and governance documentation rather than a portable Decision Dossier plus validation-pack model.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Not positioned around one confidence-scored execution verdict before action proceeds.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Can support broader governance and review states, but do-nothing or deliberate hold logic is not the core product posture.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Better for enterprise governance breadth than before-money-moves execution control.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Can sit in large enterprise stacks, but Google Cloud / Vertex AI governance fit is not the primary differentiation.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Broader governance controls rather than explicit org-wide and per-decision kill switches as a product surface.

Comparison area	Decionis	Cohere Health
Primary job	Govern execution authority and produce audit proof before an action commits	Generate clinical prior authorization and medical-necessity recommendations
Layer	The authority and audit layer around the decision, across workflows	The clinical intelligence inside the prior authorization decision
Best fit for	Compliance, governance, revenue cycle, and operations leaders	Utilization management and clinical operations teams
Core artifact	Signed Decision Dossier with policy version and authority verification	Evidence-based clinical recommendation and UM decision
Relationship	Engine-agnostic — governs the action around any UM or PA system	Complementary clinical engine that Decionis can govern, not replace
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Focused on producing the clinical recommendation, not on gating whether the downstream action is authorized to execute across referral, procurement, and operational workflows.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Clinical decision records inside the UM workflow rather than a portable, cryptographically chained Decision Dossier plus org-level validation-pack model that travels to a regulator.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Clinical evidence and recommendations rather than one certified execution verdict — authorize, block, escalate, or restrain — at the action boundary.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Centered on medical-necessity determination rather than deliberate hold or restraint of an action pending verified human authority.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Strong inside clinical prior authorization, but not positioned as a before-the-action execution authority laane spanning procurement and operations.
Google Cloud and Vertex AI stack fit with governance preserved	Cloud-agnostic. Decionis can expose a Vertex AI Extension or ADK tool surface while keeping the execution-time execution authority, Decision Dossiers, and audit evidence inside Decionis Protocol.	Clinical AI delivery rather than a cloud-agnostic execution authority layer that preserves approval paths and Decision Dossiers across stacks.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Clinical workflow controls rather than explicit org-wide and per-decision execution kill switches as a public proof point.

Comparison area	Decionis	native Shopify discount controls
Primary job	Enforce a deterministic net-margin floor at checkout against a verified cost basis	Express static discount combinations, caps, and rule-based automations
Cost-basis awareness	Evaluates unit cost from your ERP or Shopify; a product needs a cost on file to be margin-checked	No cost-basis concept — a percentage cap can still ship below cost
Before-enforcement evidence	Read-only Shadow Mode + Drift Report quantifies exposure from your own data first	No equivalent — rules are either off or live
Core artifact	Signed Decision Dossier per held order, sealed into a tamper-evident ledger	Order tags / logs, not a signed, portable proof of the held decision
Relationship	Sits beside native rules and your pricing engine — governs the margin floor around them	The platform baseline Decionis layers deterministic governance on top of
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Native rules fire inside Shopify but don't gate on a verified net-margin/cost-basis check before the discount commits.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Order tags, logs, and Flow run history rather than a portable, cryptographically chained Decision Dossier and Execution Ledger that finance can export and verify.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	A rule either applies or doesn't, with no single certified verdict (allow / hold / review) carrying the margin math and policy version that produced it.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	No deliberate review/hold when the cost basis is missing — the rule simply proceeds on whatever data is present rather than restraining the action.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Operates at the discount-rule layer, not as a before-the-sale margin control plane that verifies cost-basis truth at admission and margin at execution.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Toggling rules individually in admin, without a governed org-wide and per-rule monitor→enforce kill switch backed by an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Agentis
Scope of the gate	One deterministic gate across coupon-stacking, net-margin floor, multi-channel over-selling, and AI agent actions in a single pass	Agentis positions itself around COGS-aware margin-floor enforcement and MAP — margin-centric rather than one gate across all four
Core artifact	Signed, non-repudiable, reproducible Ed25519 Decision Dossier per decision, sealed into a tamper-evident ledger	Agentis markets a per-evaluation audit trail — a log rather than an independently verifiable signed proof
Latency	p95 decision compute under 120ms at checkout — a benchmarked target, not an SLA	Agentis markets real-time enforcement
Decision model	Deterministic — the same inputs and policy version always produce the same verdict, which is what makes the dossier reproducible	Agentis positions itself as an AI-powered margin governance layer
Evaluation path	Self-serve read-only Shadow Mode first — no demo, no checkout changes, reversible per rule	Agentis is marketed through a vendor-led enforcement rollout rather than a documented self-serve read-only install
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Agentis markets margin-floor enforcement at checkout, but positions itself around the margin dimension rather than one gate that also holds coupon-stacking, over-selling, and AI agent actions before the order commits.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Agentis markets a per-evaluation audit trail rather than a portable, cryptographically signed Ed25519 Decision Dossier and Execution Ledger that a third party can independently verify.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Agentis positions itself around margin allow/block rather than a single certified verdict (authorize / block / escalate / restrain) carrying the margin math and policy version across every governed dimension.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Agentis positions itself around enforcing a margin floor rather than a deliberate hold/restrain when cost basis or policy inputs are missing across coupon, over-sell, and agent-action checks.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Agentis markets checkout-time margin enforcement rather than a single before-the-sale control plane that verifies cost-basis truth and governs coupon, over-sell, and AI agent actions together.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Agentis markets margin enforcement toggles rather than a governed org-wide and per-decision monitor→enforce kill switch backed by an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Runta
What it governs	The business decision/action at the point of execution — authorize / block / escalate / restrain on this refund, payout, order margin, or payment-authorization message	The compute environment the agent runs in — process isolation, network egress, credentials, CPU (the sandbox)
Semantic awareness	Understands the action’s economic/business content — margin, refund amount, payroll variance, duplicate invoice — and evaluates it against a versioned policy bundle	Blind to business meaning by design — governs approved endpoints and spend ceilings, not policy on the action itself
Interception point	Intercepts and consumes the action inline at the semantic boundary — ISO-8583 payment authorization, native bot actions, workflow pre-commit	Intercepts at the process/syscall/network boundary — the microVM sandbox around the agent
Core artifact / proof	Signed, reproducible Ed25519 Decision Dossier, offline-verifiable by a third party against a public JWKS	Replayable execution records — a process trace rather than an independently verifiable signed verdict
Relationship	Complementary — an agent inside a Runta sandbox can call Decionis for the verdict and a single-use, action-bound execution grant	A runtime-isolation substrate that composes beneath a decision-authority layer, not a replacement for one
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Runta enforces egress allow-lists and spend caps on the agent’s process, but does not return a policy verdict on whether a specific business action is allowed before the workflow, transaction, or state change continues.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Runta markets replayable execution records (process replay) rather than a portable, cryptographically signed Ed25519 Decision Dossier a third party can independently verify offline.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Runta governs process, network, and credential access rather than returning a single certified verdict (authorize / block / escalate / restrain) carrying the policy version and business math for the action.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Runta contains the runtime by construction (isolation, egress control) rather than deliberately holding or restraining a specific business action when policy inputs like cost basis, entitlement, or variance are missing.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Runta caps spend and restricts endpoints at the process boundary rather than evaluating the business action itself — this refund, this payout, this payment-authorization message — before money moves.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Runta offers process-level isolation and egress control rather than a governed org-wide and per-decision monitor→enforce kill switch over business actions, backed by a signed audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Signifyd (order-fraud & chargeback protection; also Riskified, Forter)
Primary job	Prevent good-faith margin leakage (coupon-stacking, price drift, AI pricing that drifts below cost, over-selling) at checkout	Screen orders for fraud and protect against chargeback liability
Decision model	Deterministic — verified cost basis and policy version produce the same verdict every time	Positions around a probabilistic identity and transaction risk score
Risk addressed	Legitimate orders that ship below your net-margin floor	Fraudulent orders, account takeover, and chargebacks
Core artifact	Signed, reproducible Decision Dossier per held order, sealed into a tamper-evident ledger	Fraud decision plus, typically, a chargeback guarantee on approved orders
Relationship	Complementary — governs the margin dimension a fraud tool is not designed to cover	Complementary fraud layer that can run alongside Decionis, not replace it
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Fraud platforms are designed to approve or decline on identity and transaction risk, not to gate on a verified net-margin/cost-basis check before a legitimate discount commits.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Typically a fraud decision and chargeback-guarantee record rather than a portable, cryptographically signed Decision Dossier and Execution Ledger that finance can independently verify.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	A probabilistic fraud score of approve/decline rather than one deterministic certified verdict carrying the margin math and policy version that produced it.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Designed to decline suspected fraud, not to deliberately hold a legitimate order when the cost basis is missing or a discount would breach the margin floor.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Positioned as fraud and chargeback protection at checkout rather than a before-the-sale margin control plane spanning coupon, over-sell, and AI agent actions.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Fraud-model controls rather than a governed org-wide and per-decision monitor→enforce kill switch backed by an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Manual margin reports (BigQuery, spreadsheets, BI dashboards)
Primary job	Prevent below-floor orders inline at checkout against a verified cost basis	Detect and explain margin loss after orders have shipped
Timing	At checkout, before the order commits (p95 decision compute under 120ms)	Retrospective — typically days or weeks after the fact
Detection vs prevention	Prevention — the leak is blocked before it ships	Detection — the leak is measured after the money is gone
Core artifact	Signed, reproducible Decision Dossier per held order, sealed into a tamper-evident ledger	A report, query result, or dashboard tile you reconcile and trust
Human dependency	Deterministic control that does not rely on someone watching a dashboard	Typically requires a human to notice, interpret, and chase the finding
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	A report reads data after the fact; it is not designed to gate a checkout on a verified net-margin/cost-basis check before the order commits.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	A query output or dashboard export you have to reconcile, rather than a portable, cryptographically signed Decision Dossier and Execution Ledger produced at the moment of the decision.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Aggregated metrics and trends rather than one deterministic certified verdict (allow / hold / review) at the action boundary.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Reporting cannot hold an order; it records what already shipped rather than restraining a below-floor action when cost basis or policy is insufficient.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Retrospective analytics rather than a before-the-sale margin control plane that verifies cost-basis truth at admission and margin at execution.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	No enforcement surface to toggle — a report cannot switch between monitor and enforce, unlike a governed org-wide and per-decision kill switch with an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Custom Shopify Scripts / Functions (build-it-yourself)
Build vs buy	A governed, maintained product — the deterministic gate, cost basis, and signed proof ship with it	Build-it-yourself bespoke code you own, extend, and maintain
Cost-basis awareness	Evaluates a verified unit cost from your ERP or Shopify; a product needs a cost on file to be margin-checked	You source and maintain the cost yourself
Core artifact	Signed, non-repudiable, reproducible Decision Dossier per held order, sealed into a ledger	Unsigned bespoke code with logs — no independently verifiable signed record
Coverage	Cross-channel and ERP-aware, governing the margin floor beyond a single storefront	Shopify-only by design
Rollout & control	Read-only Shadow Mode first, one-click monitor→enforce toggle, and a kill switch with an audit record	You build the read-only path, the toggle, and the audit trail — or go straight to live
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Functions can reject an order at checkout, but the verified net-margin/cost-basis check and fail-closed behavior are yours to build; left as bespoke code they are easy to leave fail-open.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Application logs from custom code rather than a portable, cryptographically signed Decision Dossier and Execution Ledger that finance can export and independently verify.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	A hand-written rule either applies or does not, with no single certified verdict carrying the margin math and policy version that produced it unless you build that yourself.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Deliberate hold-when-cost-is-unknown is not built in; a Function typically proceeds on whatever data is present rather than restraining the action.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Operates at the single-storefront validation layer rather than as a cross-surface before-the-sale margin control plane verifying cost-basis truth at admission.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	You would build your own enable/disable path in code, rather than a governed org-wide and per-rule monitor→enforce kill switch backed by an audit record.

Comparison area	Decionis	Open Policy Agent (OPA)
Primary job	Decide and prove business actions — discounts, orders, payments, agent calls	General-purpose policy evaluation for infrastructure and services
Policy authoring	Operator-set rules and policy packs; no policy language to learn	Rego — expressive and general, owned by engineers
Enforcement points	Shipped: checkout, marketplace orders, agent tool calls, automation steps	You integrate OPA at each enforcement point yourself
Human escalation	Built in — an escalated verdict reaches a person with the evidence attached	Not built in; allow/deny only, escalation flows are your code
Per-decision evidence	Signed, independently verifiable Decision Dossier for every verdict	Decision logs for ops telemetry; unsigned, pipeline-dependent
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Gates whatever you wire it into — commonly Kubernetes admission and service authz; the business-action integration points are yours to build.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	Decision logs you collect and store yourself, rather than a portable, cryptographically signed Decision Dossier sealed at the moment of the decision.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Returns whatever your Rego produces — typically allow/deny — rather than one certified business verdict (allow / hold / escalate) with the evidence attached.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Expressible in Rego if you write it, but deliberate hold-until-a-human-decides is not a built-in outcome with a delivery path to that human.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	A policy engine you can place before money moves if you build the placement; not a shipped before-the-action layer for commerce, payments, and agent spend.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Policy updates can disable rules, but there is no governed org-wide monitor→enforce switch with an audit record unless you build one.

Comparison area	Decionis	Credal
What is governed	Any consequential action, from any platform, at the moment of execution	Agents built and run inside the Credal platform
Policy source	The organisation's own written, versioned policy over the action's facts	Permissions mirrored from the systems each user already has access to, plus approval rules
Human approval	A held state bound to the specific action, resolved by a named approver, re-evaluated with the receipt	Human approval before sensitive actions run, recorded in the platform's audit trail
Record of the decision	A signed Decision Dossier that verifies against a published key and re-derives outside both vendors	A consolidated audit trail of actions initiated, approved and executed, kept by the platform
Trying it safely	Shadow mode evaluates real traffic and reports what would have been held before anything is enforced	Governance is configured within the platform; a shadow-evaluation mode is not described in its public documentation
Policy-gated execution before money moves or system state changes	Yes. Your team gets the policy answer before a workflow, approval, transaction, or system state change continues.	Human approval can gate an action inside Credal; policy over the action's own facts — amounts, margins, counterparties — is not what permission mirroring evaluates.
Decision Dossier and audit trail	Yes. Every certified execution can return a portable signed Decision Dossier plus broader org-level validation packs.	A consolidated audit trail inside the platform rather than a portable, signed Decision Dossier that re-derives outside it.
Confidence-scored single verdicts	Yes. Decionis returns one certified verdict such as authorize, block, escalate, or restrain rather than leaving multiple interpretations at the point of action.	Allow-or-approve on an action rather than one certified allow, escalate or block verdict carrying the policy version that produced it.
Do-nothing / restraint logic	Yes. Decionis can deliberately hold or restrain action when confidence, evidence, or policy is insufficient.	Approval before action; a deliberate hold-when-evidence-is-insufficient state is not described in its public documentation.
Execution-before-money-moves governance	Built as the execution authority layer before spend, approvals, routing, or high-stakes operations proceed.	Governance for the agents it runs, rather than an authority step every surface shares before money moves.
Org-wide and per-decision kill switches	Available. Decionis keeps both org-wide and per-decision kill switches with audit logging.	Platform administration controls rather than org-wide and per-decision execution kill switches with an audit record.

Authority still lives in documents. Execution no longer waits for them.

How the gap shows up

Authority lives in documents, not in the execution path

Every system enforces its own rules, differently

Autonomy removed the human pause

After the fact, nobody can prove what was decided

The answer, in one sentence

Identity proves who. Guardrails judge content. Authority decides the action.

Identity and access

Guardrails and AI security

Execution Authority