🛡️ ARGUS -- The verification layer for AI-generated code

AI generates code at near-zero cost. Human review didn't get faster. The bottleneck inverted: it's no longer generation -- it's verification.

ARGUS is the verification infrastructure. 15 Rust crates, 4 specialists, an audit chain that's BLAKE3-hash-chained and Ed25519-signed -- EU AI Act Art. 12 Level 2 ready by default. MIT licensed. BYOK. Zero SaaS lock-in.

Install · Quickstart · Why · What · Numbers · Pricing · Security

The problem is here. Now.

Open Source is dying in 2026. La confianza comunitaria se ahoga ante un +206% de scripts de Bash en proyectos AI¹, revisiones de PRs 4.6× más lentas² y 15-18% más de vulnerabilidades². Con 42% del código commiteado hoy siendo AI-generated o AI-assisted³ y el 96% de los devs desconfiando de él³, el AI slop -- Palabra del Año 2025⁴ -- ha forzado medidas extremas:

Project	Response	Date
🌐 Ladybird (browser)	Cerró sus PRs públicas. "We will no longer accept public pull requests."	Jun 2026⁵
🎨 tldraw (whiteboard)	Auto-close de PRs externas. "Open source contribution has always been a gift economy held together by proof of work. AI has changed that."	Jan 2026⁶
🎮 RPCS3 (PS3 emulator)	Tuvo que revertir múltiples PRs AI que causaron regresiones en producción.	May 2026⁷
🌐 cURL (web infrastructure)	Canceló su bug bounty porque 19 de cada 20 reportes eran alucinaciones sintéticas.	Jan 2026⁸

Fuentes: ¹GitHub Octoverse 2025 · ²Opsera 2026 AI Coding Impact Report · ³Sonar State of Code Developer Survey 2026 · ⁴Merriam-Webster Word of the Year 2025 · ⁵Ladybird blog · ⁶tldraw issue #7695 · ⁷RPCS3 commit c0b3580 · ⁸Daniel Stenberg, "The end of the curl bug-bounty"

🤖 AI slop is a tragedy of the commons (arXiv:2603.27249): individual productivity gains externalize costs onto reviewers and maintainers. The bottleneck isn't generation. It's verification.

💡 What ARGUS is

ARGUS = AI Review & Governance for Undermining Slop -- the trust layer for AI-generated code.

One product. Three layers. Four specialists. One signed certificate per analysis.

Built for engineering managers, OSS maintainers, and CISOs who need an audit-grade, EU AI Act-ready answer to the verification bottleneck. Pure Rust (15 crates, zero Python, zero Node.js in production). BYOK (your NVIDIA NIM key, never persisted). MIT licensed.

🛡️ The 3 layers (one worker each)

Worker	When it runs	What it does	Latency
Aegis Guard	Pre-commit / pre-push	Hybrid scan on the staged diff: deterministic AST pre-flight (5 SLOP rules, regex, <100ms) + LLM semantic. Blocks critical issues.	<2s
Aegis Verify	PR review (webhook or one-shot)	4 specialists in parallel via Tokio `join!` + CordonEnforcer (synthesizer never sees raw code). Emits a `fix_plan.json` for downstream coding agents.	4-8s
Aegis Lens	Weekly digest	Aggregates findings across an org, ranks top offenders, generates an executive briefing (text + optional HeyGen video).	5-15s

🤖 The 4 specialists (run in parallel inside Verify)

Specialist	Prompt	What it catches	Hybrid?
Aegis Slop	`slop-detector`	Narrative comments, swallowed errors, oversized fns (>80 LOC), `.unwrap()` outside tests, TODO stubs, unused `pub fn`	✅ regex + LLM
Aegis Security	`redteam-security`	Hardcoded credentials, injection, unsafe panic, unhandled errors, OWASP Top 10	LLM
Aegis Arch	`architecture-fit`	Repo coherence, pattern matching, idiom detection, separation of concerns	LLM
Aegis Verdict	`verdict-synthesizer`	Synthesizes the 3 above into Approved/ReviewRequired/Halted + `FixPlan`	LLM

CordonEnforcer is the moat: the verdict synthesizer in the pipeline never sees raw code. It only sees the structured outputs of the other three specialists. No competitor (CodeRabbit, Greptile, Qodo) has this constraint.

✨ The 7 things that make ARGUS different

1. Hybrid detection -- cheap + deep

SLOP-001 oversized fn (size)         ─► regex  < 1ms     catches 40-60% of slop
SLOP-002 swallowed error arm          ─► regex  < 1ms
SLOP-003 TODO stub                    ─► regex  < 1ms
SLOP-004 unwrap/expect outside tests  ─► regex  < 1ms
SLOP-005 unused pub fn                ─► regex  < 1ms
  + semantic reasoning               ─► LLM    2-4s     catches the rest

No competitor has this combination. The result: 60-80% LLM cost reduction on typical PRs. Measured: P=1.000, R=0.818, F1=0.900 on 40-PR benchmark (BENCHMARK.md).

2. EU AI Act Article 12 Level 2 ready by default

The 16-field AuditEvent is automatically emitted on every LLM call:

{
  "audit_id": "...",
  "timestamp": "2026-06-12T19:00:00Z",
  "model_id": "deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-flash",
  "prompt_template_version": "abc123",
  "prompt_fingerprint": "BLAKE3 hex (GDPR-safe)",
  "response_fingerprint": "BLAKE3 hex",
  "data_class": "source_code",
  "policy_version": "verify-worker-v1-policy",
  "decision": { "verdict": "warn", "findings_count": 2, "rationale": "..." },
  "prev_hash": "...", "signature": "Ed25519 hex"
}

Verifiable: curl /audit/export?from=2026-01-01&to=2026-12-31 returns NDJSON with a BLAKE3 manifest footer. No cleartext prompts, ever. GDPR derivative-liability-safe by construction. Enforcement starts Aug 2, 2026 -- 51 days from this README.

3. MCP server for Claude Code / Codex / Cursor

// ~/.config/claude-code/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "argus": {
      "command": "argus-mcp",
      "env": { "ARGUS_NIM_KEY": "nvapi-..." }
    }
  }
}

Four tools land in your agent's toolbox:

aegis_slop → AI slop signals
aegis_security → adversarial review
aegis_arch → architectural fit score
aegis_verdict → final verdict + FixPlan

Your coding agent now has ARGUS on tap. It can run a slop check, a security check, and a verdict on its own draft PR -- automatically, before it ever asks for human review.

4. A2A AgentCards -- discoverable to Google's open protocol

GET /.well-known/agent-card.json
GET /a2a/message

Opt-in via ARGUS_A2A_DISABLED=false. Google A2A orchestrators can discover and message our 4 specialists.

5. BYOK economics -- $0.05/dev/month

User provides the NVIDIA NIM key (X-LLM-Key header or ARGUS_NIM_KEY env)
No telemetry, no tracking, no per-seat fees
We don't see your diffs -- they go directly from your process to NIM
100× cheaper than CodeRabbit ($0.10-0.50/PR) at scale

6. Production resilience out of the box

LLM circuit breaker with full-jitter exponential backoff (rolled our own, no llm-retry dep)
Idempotency-Key support on POST /analyze (24h TTL)
Graceful shutdown on SIGINT/SIGTERM (Axum with_graceful_shutdown)
OpenTelemetry stdout exporter (env-gated via ARGUS_OTEL_DISABLED)
SQLite audit persistence (InMemoryAuditStore for ephemeral, SqliteAuditStore for durable)

7. Pure Rust 100%, MSRV 1.88

15 crates, 4 binaries
194 tests passing (no flaky)
cargo build --release in 1m 27s
Zero Python, zero Node.js in the production binary
RUSTFLAGS="-D warnings" cargo test is the CI gate

🏛️ Architecture

                         ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
                         │  GitHub PR / commit / org scan      │
                         └──────────────┬──────────────────────┘
                                        │
                                        ▼
        ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │                       ARGUS -- Three Layers                    │
        │                                                               │
        │   Aegis Guard       Aegis Verify       Aegis Lens            │
        │   (pre-commit)  ──► (PR review)   ──► (weekly digest)       │
        │   <2s             4-8s              5-15s                    │
        │                   │                                            │
        │                   ▼                                            │
        │          4 specialists in parallel                            │
        │          (slop, security, arch, verdict)                      │
        │                   │                                            │
        │                   ▼                                            │
        │   ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐       │
        │   │  AuditEvent (16 fields) -- EU AI Act L2 ready      │       │
        │   │  BLAKE3 chain + Ed25519 signature + BLAKE3 NDJSON  │       │
        │   │  manifest at /audit/export                          │       │
        │   └───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘       │
        │                       │                                         │
        │                       ▼                                         │
        │   SQLite (in-process)  ◄──►  Supabase Postgres (remote, opt.)  │
        └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                        │
                                        ▼
                ┌───────────────────────────────────┐
                │  Dashboard  (axum + htmx + SSR)    │
                │  Weekly briefings (HeyGen deeplink)│
                │  Cohort view (CodeRabbit-style)   │
                │  + /audit/export for regulators    │
                └───────────────────────────────────┘

        External:
        ───────
        MCP server (apohara-argus-mcp) ──► Claude Code / Codex / Cursor
        A2A AgentCards         ──► Google A2A orchestrators

📦 Install (30 seconds)

Pick the path that matches your environment. All three ship the same MIT-licensed core.

Path	Command	What you get
npm (no Rust needed)	`npx @apohara/argus --help`	The CLI + the MCP server. Downloads the right binary on first run.
cargo (Rust toolchain)	`cargo install apohara-argus-cli`	Just the CLI. Faster startup, no download step.
Docker	`docker run -e ARGUS_NIM_KEY=$YOUR_NIM_KEY SuarezPM/apohara-argus --help`	Full containerized ARGUS, no host dependencies.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/SuarezPM/apohara-argus
cd apohara-argus
cargo build --release
./target/release/argus --help

Verify the install

npx @apohara/argus health
# or
argus health
# or
docker run -e ARGUS_NIM_KEY=$YOUR_NIM_KEY SuarezPM/apohara-argus health

🚀 Quickstart (90 seconds end-to-end)

git clone https://github.com/SuarezPM/apohara-argus.git
cd apohara-argus

# 1. Get a free NVIDIA NIM key at https://build.nvidia.com/
export ARGUS_NIM_KEY=nvapi-xxx

# 2. Build everything (pure Rust, MSRV 1.88, ~1m 27s on a modern laptop)
cargo build --release

# 3. Pre-commit guard on a local diff
echo "+ user.password = 'hunter2'" | cargo run -p apohara-argus-cli -- guard --diff -

# 4. PR review (one-shot, with the 4 specialists)
cargo run -p apohara-argus-cli -- verify --pr-url https://github.com/owner/repo/pull/42

# 5. Weekly digest for an org
cargo run -p apohara-argus-cli -- lens --org acme --mock-prs "acme/api#1,acme/web#2"

# 6. Start the dashboard (SSR, port 3000)
cargo run -p argus-dashboard

# 7. Start the MCP server (for Claude Code / Codex)
cargo run -p apohara-argus-mcp

# 8. Verify EU AI Act compliance (BLAKE3 chain + manifest)
curl http://localhost:8080/audit/export?from=2026-01-01 | tail -1
# → { "# manifest: { "count": 47, "b3_hash": "...", ... } }

📊 The numbers

Numbers we measured (BENCHMARK.md), not promised:

Metric	Value	Why it matters
Precision	1.000 on 40-PR dataset	Zero false positives on the deterministic layer
Recall	0.818 on 40-PR dataset	Catches 82% of AI-slop patterns; the 2 FNs are documented as rule-scope gaps
F1 score	0.900	Above the 0.70 plan target
Deterministic slop pass	<100ms on 10k LOC	60-80% of LLM cost saved
`cargo build --release`	1m 27s	Fast iteration
Tests	194 passing	Boring reliable
Per-dev cost	$0.05/month (BYOK)	100× cheaper than CodeRabbit at scale
EU AI Act Art. 12	Level 2 ready	Regulators can verify via `curl /audit/export`
Crates	15	4 binaries
MSRV	1.88	Compatible with stable Rust 2024
Pure Rust	100%	No Python, no Node.js in production

🆚 Comparison

	ARGUS	CodeRabbit	Greptile	Qodo
BYOK	✅ NVIDIA NIM	❌ SaaS only	❌ SaaS only	❌ SaaS only
Per-dev cost	$0.05/mo	$0.10-0.50/PR	$25/mo	$40-60/mo
EU AI Act ready	✅ Art.12 L2	❌	❌	❌
Audit trail signed	✅ Ed25519 + BLAKE3	❌	❌	❌
MCP server	✅ 4 tools	❌	❌	❌
A2A AgentCards	✅	❌	❌	❌
CordonEnforcer (synthesizer doesn't see raw code)	✅	❌	❌	❌
Hybrid detection (deterministic + LLM)	✅	❌ LLM-only	❌ LLM-only	❌ LLM-only
Measured P/R/F1	✅ P=1.0, R=0.82	❌	❌	❌
Open source	✅ MIT	❌	❌	❌
Pure Rust	✅	❌ TS/Node	❌ TS/Node	❌ TS/Node

👥 For the [target user]

For the CISO 👔

EU AI Act Art. 12 compliance is one curl, not a 6-month audit. The audit chain is BLAKE3-hash-chained and Ed25519-signed -- your regulator can verify it offline without trusting ARGUS. BYOK + offline-first means your code never leaves your host. No data residency issue. See docs/for-ciso.md for the full pitch.

For the engineering manager 📊

ARGUS pays for itself in week 1 of any team > 3 developers:

Per dev: 25-40 min/PR saved in review (only edit the bot's draft) + ~15 min/week avoided in re-work
Per team of 10 devs: 4-7 hrs/week in maintainer time + 5-10 AI slop bugs prevented/month
Per engineering manager: 4-6 hrs/week in manual reporting → 0 with Aegis Lens

For the OSS maintainer 🛠️

Stop drowning in AI slop. Add ARGUS as a pre-commit hook or a PR webhook. P=1.0, R=0.82 on the deterministic layer means zero false positives for the rules we ship. The LLM semantic layer catches the rest. Triage in 4-8 seconds, not 40 minutes.

🗺️ Roadmap (what's shipped, what's next)

The 19 features shipped (1 of 20 deliberately not done):

#	Feature	Status
1.1	Cohort view (dashboard)	✅ Shipped
1.2	`fix_plan.json` hand-off	✅ Shipped
1.3	aislop CI badge	✅ Shipped (dogfooding virtuous loop)
2.1	`AuditEvent` (16 fields) BLAKE3 + Ed25519	✅ Shipped
2.2	NDJSON audit export	✅ Shipped (regulator-ready)
2.4	Retention in `argus health`	✅ Shipped (warns if <180d per Art. 19)
3.1	LLM circuit breaker	✅ Shipped (no retry storms on NIM outage)
3.2	A2A AgentCards	✅ Shipped (Google's open protocol)
4	EU AI Act L2 conformance	✅ Shipped (default)
4.1	Per-role model registry	✅ Shipped (deepseek-v4 / nemotron-3 / glm-5.1)
5	MCP server	✅ Shipped (4 tools for Claude Code/Codex/Cursor)
5.1	Deterministic slop pre-flight	✅ Shipped (5 SLOP rules, <100ms)
6.1	Graceful shutdown	✅ Shipped (Axum `with_graceful_shutdown`)
6.2	Idempotency-Key	✅ Shipped (24h TTL, no double-billing)
6.3	OpenTelemetry stdout	✅ Shipped (env-gated)
6.4	SQLite audit persistence	✅ Shipped (sqlx 0.7)
7.1	HeyGen deeplink	✅ Shipped (url_encode, 0% cost)
8.2	SPIFFE primitives	✅ Shipped (spiffe 0.16)
7.2	BYVK opt-in (HeyGen/D-ID video integration)	⛔ Deliberately not done -- the $78-460/yr cost kills the $0.05/dev/month story. 7.1 (deeplink) gives 80% of the value at 0% of the cost.

What's next (human-action items)

🔓 crates.io publishing -- 13 crates ready; awaiting CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN repo secret
🔓 OpenSSF Best Practices Silver -- evidence map ready at docs/best-practices-silver.md; awaiting form submission at bestpractices.dev
🔓 First release on GitHub with SLSA L3 attestation, SHA256 manifest, and distroless Docker image

🛠️ Use it. Fork it. Ship it.

git clone https://github.com/SuarezPM/apohara-argus.git
cd apohara-argus
export ARGUS_NIM_KEY=nvapi-xxx
cargo run -p apohara-argus-cli -- scan-diff ./your-pr.diff

License: MIT. Self-host, modify, redistribute. No telemetry, no phone-home.

Questions? Open an issue at https://github.com/SuarezPM/apohara-argus/issues.

📚 Read the docs

Doc	What's in it
docs/VERIFICATION.md	The 22-check local verification report
docs/CI-VERIFICATION.md	The 4 auto-trigger GitHub Actions workflows
docs/HANDS-ON-QA.md	22/22 hands-on QA checks pass
docs/SCOPE-FIDELITY.md	95/100 scope fidelity, 24/28 sub-tasks delivered
docs/best-practices-silver.md	OpenSSF Best Practices Silver evidence map
docs/BENCHMARK.md	P/R/F1 on 40 PRs + latency + cost
docs/pricing.md	3 tiers (Free / Team / Enterprise)
docs/for-ciso.md	CISO-targeted EU AI Act pitch
docs/branch-protection.md	Branch protection policy + `gh api` snippet
SECURITY.md	Threat model (covers / does NOT cover)
GOVERNANCE.md	Roles, access continuity, fork-ability
CONTRIBUTING.md	DCO + coding standards + testing policy
CHANGELOG.md	Keep a Changelog format

Built for the Platzi Reto AI Academy as 5 projects in one product: System of Prompts · Automate the Flow · Web App · The Agent · MVP with Real Intelligence. 1 Cargo workspace, 15 crates, 194 tests, MIT license. The verification layer for the AI-generated code era.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 166 Commits
.github		.github
crates		crates
deploy		deploy
docs		docs
fuzz		fuzz
npm		npm
tests		tests
.bestpractices.json		.bestpractices.json
.env.example		.env.example
.gitignore		.gitignore
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md		CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
CONTRIBUTING.md		CONTRIBUTING.md
Cargo.lock		Cargo.lock
Cargo.toml		Cargo.toml
GOVERNANCE.md		GOVERNANCE.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
SECURITY.md		SECURITY.md
THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES		THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES
about.hbs		about.hbs
about.toml		about.toml
aislop-score.json		aislop-score.json
deny.toml		deny.toml
rust-toolchain.toml		rust-toolchain.toml

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🛡️ ARGUS -- The verification layer for AI-generated code

The problem is here. Now.

💡 What ARGUS is

🛡️ The 3 layers (one worker each)

🤖 The 4 specialists (run in parallel inside Verify)

✨ The 7 things that make ARGUS different

1. Hybrid detection -- cheap + deep

2. EU AI Act Article 12 Level 2 ready by default

3. MCP server for Claude Code / Codex / Cursor

4. A2A AgentCards -- discoverable to Google's open protocol

5. BYOK economics -- $0.05/dev/month

6. Production resilience out of the box

7. Pure Rust 100%, MSRV 1.88

🏛️ Architecture

📦 Install (30 seconds)

Build from source

Verify the install

🚀 Quickstart (90 seconds end-to-end)

📊 The numbers

🆚 Comparison

👥 For the [target user]

For the CISO 👔

For the engineering manager 📊

For the OSS maintainer 🛠️

🗺️ Roadmap (what's shipped, what's next)

What's next (human-action items)

🛠️ Use it. Fork it. Ship it.

📚 Read the docs

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