Deterministic Examine engine · runs inside your boundary

Every determination, traced to evidence. Every objective, every citation.

SparkAE reads an assessment package, evaluates every “Determine if” objective through seven deterministic gates, and shows precisely what the evidence supports, contradicts, or fails to prove. Interview and Test stay with the assessor. No black box. The browser demo runs in this tab and uploads nothing; the server edition is built to run inside your boundary with no outbound calls by default.

Sample package · no signup · nothing uploaded · runs in your browser

Public preview This build runs the engine, not a recording. It reads the documents you give it and computes every determination in the baseline. Those determinations are automated EXAMINE preparation an assessor checks, not an authorization decision, and their accuracy rests on a small published case set rather than on real authorization packages — what the engine gets wrong is published beside what it gets right: the accuracy benchmark →. This describes the public build in this repository, not the commercial server product.

NIST SP 800-53A Rev 5 FedRAMP Rev5 profile OSCAL 1.1.2 exports Zero outbound by default Not a GRC platform
AT-1_a.[01] · Policy and Procedures
Other Than Satisfied
Confidence0.32 / 1.0
DefensibilityGrade B · 69/100
Gap typeMissing evidence
MethodEXAMINE
ObjectiveDetermine if an awareness and training policy is developed and documented.
EvidenceCloudVault-Federal-SSP.txt — the nearest evidence is the Access Control Policy (v3.2): purpose, scope, roles, annual review, all present and traceable. It is a strong document about a different subject. The package contains nothing on awareness or training.
Failed gateGate 2 · 2a coverage 0% (need 40%) · 2b evidence does not address this control's subject (awareness, training).
FindingConcept coverage 0% (need 40%); missing: awareness, training policy is developed. Other Than Satisfied.
CorrectionProvide documentation covering: awareness, training policy is developed. Draft until an assessor adopts it.
OSCAL assessment-results record ▾
{ "target": { "type": "objective-id", "target-id": "AT-1_a.[01]",
              "status": { "state": "not-satisfied" } },
  "props": [ { "name": "control-id", "ns": "https://fedramp.gov/ns/oscal", "value": "at-1" } ],
  "related-risks": [ { "risk-uuid": "…" } ] }
 
risks[] — where the gap lives on an Other Than Satisfied finding
{ "uuid": "…", "title": "Missing Evidence — AT-1", "status": "open",
  "remediations": [ { "lifecycle": "recommendation",
    "description": "Provide documentation covering: awareness, training policy is developed." } ] }
One finding from the sample run · CloudVault · FedRAMP Low · 2026-06-01 · synthetic dataSame evidence → same result, every time
410
Controls · FedRAMP High profile
1,429
"Determine if" objectives · FedRAMP High baseline (410 controls)
981
Objectives the browser demo assesses · FedRAMP Low
7
Deterministic gates per objective
Drop the package. See the gaps. Keep the judgment.
Two jobs, one engine. The same rules on every run, provider and assessor conclusions kept separately attributed.
Upload. Assess. Export. Every objective, every citation.
The evaluation a senior assessor performs, automated and reproducible. Examine only.

Upload

Browser demo: .zip, .docx, .txt, .md, .csv, .json, .xml, .nessus. PDF and XLSX text extraction is a server-product feature and is refused here, not guessed.

Select

The browser demo runs FedRAMP Rev5 Low (156 / 981), Moderate (323 / 1,307), or High (410 / 1,429). FRAMEWORK=nist and the PM family are server-product install flags, not this repository.

Assess

Evidence presence → concept coverage → evidence strength → ODP validation → contradictions → temporal coherence → status. Examine only.

Review

Per-objective verdicts with the passage cited, confidence (0–1.0), defensibility (A–F), gap type, and the correction — ranked by what blocks authorization first.

Export

This build: OSCAL 1.1.2 assessment-results, findings / RET / POA&M / TCW CSV, summary, and the receipt. SAR/SAP DOCX, XLSX workbooks, and OSCAL POA&M ship only in the server product. Every export, listed →

The part you can run. Right now, in this tab.
Everything above describes what the engine does. This is the engine: it reads the documents you give it and computes every determination in the baseline, in your browser.
§01 Initial assessmentLive engine SSP → determinations. Seven gates over every objective in the baseline, each verdict citing the evidence passage the engine used, and OSCAL 1.1.2 plus CSV exports built from that run. Runs in your browser on the sample package or one you drop in — nothing is uploaded. Run it →

The demo's other eight sections are guided walkthroughs of the rest of the FedRAMP lifecycle. They do not run the engine, they are labelled on the page, and they are listed under Under the hood.

Why deterministic matters. Why a CUI program can use it at all.
Cloud-native tools cannot follow you inside the boundary. This one does not need to.
Deterministic
No wall-clock in the verdict path, no randomness, no model drift. The same evidence, catalog, ruleset and assessment date yield the same determinations on any machine, on any day — and every run emits a reproducibility receipt naming those inputs and the resulting verdict digest. Exports derive their identifiers and timestamps from that receipt, so they are byte-identical too.
Zero data out
The default install makes no outbound calls: no HTTP, no DNS, no CDN, no telemetry. CUI never transits a vendor cloud because there is none in the path. Nothing leaves the network unless you turn that on. Whether a given deployment is suitable for CUI still depends on how you deploy and accredit it: the software supports the boundary, it does not confer the authorization.
Satisfied has to clear published floors
A Satisfied verdict requires all seven gates to pass — evidence above the retrieval threshold, concept coverage at or above 40%, traceable references, resolved ODPs, no contradiction, temporal currency — and those thresholds are constants hashed into the ruleset digest, so the bar is published with every result. The floors are lexical: retrieval matches words, not subject matter, and evidence that clears them can still fail to address the objective. Every determination is a draft for an assessor to adopt, override or reject.
Machine-readable
Native OSCAL 1.1.2 assessment-results, validated against the vendored NIST 1.1.2 schema on every build. The POA&M this build writes is CSV; OSCAL POA&M is a server-product export. Structured from the start, whatever shape the mandate takes.

This site loads no trackers, no analytics, and no third-party scripts or fonts. The engine, by default, makes no outbound calls. The browser demo assesses the package on your machine and uploads nothing.

What a pilot has to prove. Success criteria, not benchmarks.
We do not publish customer results yet. These are the measures a 30-day pilot is scored against — on your package, in your environment, with your reviewers keeping the numbers.
Coverage
Every objective in the baseline receives a verdict with a citation: 981 at Low, 1,307 at Moderate, 1,429 at High. Nothing sampled, nothing skipped.
Blockers surfaced before submission
Other-Than-Satisfied objectives ranked by gap type, each with the passage and the correction — compared against what your reviewers find by hand.
Rerun after a document change
A full rerun on the revised package, and a diff of what changed, measured in minutes on your hardware.
First-pass Examine labor
Senior-reviewer hours on the Examine pass, before and during the pilot. You keep the timesheet; the pilot report states the delta you measured.
Reproducibility
The same package produces the same verdicts on a second machine on a different day, checked by hashing the assessment-results export.
Fit with your stack
Findings reach the tool you already run as OSCAL or CSV files it imports, without a second system of record. Whether a given tool accepts them is tested in the pilot, not assumed.
Assessment, not a framework. The framework is a profile.
One engine, one set of rules. Point it at the catalog you are assessed against.
What it does

Reads evidence, not checklists

Upload the package. The 7-gate engine traces each “Determine if” objective to the evidence passages the engine used and names the ones where it found none — with a confidence score and a defensibility grade.

Profiles today

NIST SP 800-53A Rev 5

The browser demo assesses FedRAMP Rev5 Low / Moderate / High. The commercial server product also installs as plain NIST 800-53 (FRAMEWORK=nist: those sets plus the PM family). FRAMEWORK= is not a flag in this repository. FedRAMP 20x support is not part of this product and is not sold — the 20x validation-assurance walkthrough illustrates the assessment question it poses.

Whose tool it is

Neither side’s instrument

Not the provider’s self-assessment tool, not the assessor’s in-house one. It reads the package rather than the running system: it retrieves, applies seven gates, and exports what it decided and why; your GRC tool tracks.

Under the hood for engineers · deployment modes · lifecycle workflows · API · spec ▾
Three deployment modes. You choose what leaves your network.
These install lines are the commercial server product. This Apache-2.0 repository has no Python package — pip install . from this checkout does not work. LLM is always opt-in. When a model is on, it produces the determination directly; the 7-gate engine does not run alongside it.
Default · server product

Self-contained

LLM_PROVIDER=none

The deterministic 7-gate engine with ten local analytical services. BM25 retrieval, optional local ChromaDB.

  • External callsNone
  • Installserver: pip install .
Opt-in · stays local

Local LLM

LLM_PROVIDER=ollama

An Ollama-served model produces the determination; nothing leaves the network. Not sold as SCIF-ready.

  • External callsNone
  • Installserver: pip install '.[local]'
Opt-in

Cloud LLM

LLM_PROVIDER=anthropic

A cloud model produces the determination directly. Clearly flagged: those verdicts are not engine-grounded. The integrity gate (the published evidence floors) still applies.

  • External callsCloud LLM API
  • Installserver: pip install '.[cloud]'

This repository is the browser demo, not that install. Open demo-standalone.html. There is no Docker image and no /v1 API here.

Availability. The server product is not generally released yet. A fit call covers what is available today.

Eight guided walkthroughs. None of them run the engine.
The demo follows the FedRAMP lifecycle. §01 Initial Assessment is the engine and is above; these eight illustrate the rest with scripted figures, and each says so on the page.
The engine. Not a GRC platform.
The commercial server product is reviewed and tested in the private product repository. Those reviews and that suite are not published here and are not claimed as a number. The public reference build carries its own conformance suite — schema validation, catalog counts, a determinism golden, a headless-browser run — on public CI.
Catalog
NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 with 800-53A assessment objectives (447 controls, 1,513 objectives carried here — the FedRAMP High baseline plus the PT and PM controls, not the complete Rev 5 catalog); FedRAMP Rev5 baselines and CORE controls in the FedRAMP profile.
Analysis
Ten local services: BM25 retrieval, concept coverage, evidence strength, defensibility, contradiction detection, temporal coherence, ODP lifecycle, gap engine (25 types), confidence, citations.
Exports
OSCAL JSON (assessment-results, POA&M), CSV; SAR and SAP (JSON + DOCX), RET, CRM, CIS, TCW in the FedRAMP profile — 14+ formats.
Intake
Nessus, ZAP and generic CSV scans; pen-test reports; vulnerabilities mapped to controls for POA&M generation.
Access control
Eight assessment roles from system admin to authorizing official, multi-tenant org isolation, permission-gated API.
Audit
Hash-chained append-only log (AU-2 / AU-3, integrity per AU-9); syslog RFC 5424 and ArcSight CEF exports.
Interfaces
The same engine behind the assessor UI and the GRC API; JSON, CSV or OSCAL into the GRC tool you already run.
Deployment
Hardened Docker configuration: non-root, read-only filesystem, cap_drop ALL, health checks, graceful drain.

Availability. The server product is not generally released yet. A fit call covers what is available today. The browser demo on this site is available to everyone now.

SERVER PRODUCT · REST API · illustration
# Commercial server product — not this repository. There is no localhost:8000 here.
$ SSP=$(curl -s http://localhost:8000/v1/documents -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" -F file=@SSP.pdf -F document_type=SSP | jq -r .id)
# same for AC-Policy.docx → $POLICY and IR-Plan.pdf → $IRPLAN
$ curl http://localhost:8000/v1/assessments -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"baseline\":\"Low\",\"controls\":[\"AC-2\",\"IA-5\",\"CM-6\"],\"document_refs\":[\"$SSP\",\"$POLICY\",\"$IRPLAN\"]}"
Parsing 3 documents · indexing 412 evidence chunks (BM25)
Gate 1 · Evidence presence   Gate 2 · Concept coverage  Gate 3 · Evidence strength
Gate 4 · ODP validation     Gate 5 · Contradictions    Gate 6 · Temporal coherence  Gate 7 · Status
The numbers below are an API sketch, not the CloudVault sample run.
AC-2_a.[01] Satisfied cited evidence
AC-2_g Other Than Satisfied accounts not monitored
Exports: OSCAL AR · SAR · RET · POA&M · CRM · CIS

The in-browser reference engine behind the live demo is published as source — see Source in the footer. Cloning that repository does not install the API above.

Talk to the founder. A fit call, not a paid pilot.

The public site is the browser demo. If you want to discuss whether the engine fits your assessment, request a fit call or email. This is a conversation — nothing on this page starts a paid Day-0 pilot.

Prefer email? info@sparkae.ai
Or run it first The browser demo assesses a sample package against the full FedRAMP Low baseline — 156 controls, 981 objectives — entirely on your machine. No signup, no upload, no network. Drop your own package into it if you want; it never leaves the browser.

Run the browser demo →

SparkAE is independence-preserving assessment infrastructure. Where the target is FedRAMP it is not a FedRAMP Recognized independent assessment service (historically, a 3PAO), it does not replace one, and it does not make the authorization decision or issue the official Security Assessment Report or an Authorization to Operate. The recognized assessment service controls scope, testing, conclusions, overrides, and the final deliverables; the authorizing official makes the authorization decision. FedRAMP 20x support is not part of this product and is not sold. Licensing: the in-browser reference engine published at the Source link is Apache-2.0; the SparkAE server product is commercial software, licensed, not sold — federal buyers: commercial computer software under FAR 12.212 and DFARS 227.7202-1 through 227.7202-4, acquired under the licence customarily provided to the public.