Need-to-Know

## Inspiration

I spent years as an aircraft mechanic. In that job, information is need-to-know, and every step gets checked. Company AI assistants skip that rule: give one all of a company's documents, and it answers anyone about anything. I wanted a company brain that gives each person, and each AI agent, only what their job needs, and that can prove it.

## What it does

One config file (roles.conf) says which folders each role may read. An AI agent can be a role too.
nk turns that file into one locked-down OpenClaw assistant and one search per role. Every answer names its source. If the answer is in another role's documents, the assistant says it isn't available and names the team to ask.
When a question belongs to another team, the assistant offers to pass it on. It sends a request only if the person says yes. Someone on that team decides what to share and replies by email.
The handoff can't be used to get around the rules. The question is checked for hidden instructions, replies only go to company email addresses, repeat questions are dropped, and open requests are capped per person.
Every document is checked for hidden instructions before any assistant sees it.
The company's values are in the brain, so every role can quote them. HydraDB answers include them as context.
On HydraDB, every document gets an access list written from roles.conf, and every search names the role that is asking.
nk hydra-audit tests HydraDB's access. It tries every stored document as every role and as a stranger, and flags anything the wrong people can open or that nk didn't upload.
nk watches for probing. A role that reaches for other teams' information 3 times in 10 minutes gets an alert, and one question with hidden instructions is enough. The person sees a short note that such requests are reviewed. Questions passed on through a handoff don't count.
Every action goes into an audit log that can't be quietly edited. Each entry holds a fingerprint of the one before it, so nk log --verify shows any change, deletion, or missing entry.
It tests itself with a scorecard built from the access rules.