How LGD works for your team

A walkthrough and standard operating procedure for the people who use LGD — LifeStock Guardian and Defense: who does what, how setup goes, what to do when an approval arrives, and what to do when something goes wrong.

1 · Who does what

Role	Who	What they do	What they can't do
Signer	3–5 or more named people, each on their own phone (e.g. CISO, Chief Risk Officer, Head of AI Platform)	Review held actions and approve them, or let them expire	Release anything alone. It always takes the quorum.
Admin	One or two people who run the setup, in the admin console	Invite the first signers, store credentials, propose changes (new signer, new connection, resume after a halt), press the emergency stop	Release any action or approve their own proposals. Every change they propose still needs the quorum.
Agent owner	The team that runs the AI agent	Point the agent at LGD instead of at your systems	Give the agent your systems' keys. LGD holds them.
Viewer / auditor	Security, risk, internal audit	See the dashboard, export the ledger, verify receipts, press the emergency stop	Change anything
Novai	Your onboarding and support team	Create your gate, help with setup, answer questions	Approve your actions. We hold none of your signers' keys.

2 · Setup (first week, with Novai)

1We create your gate. You get your own LGD space and three access keys: one for your agent, one for your admin, one for viewers. Store them in your password manager. They're shown once.
2Name your five signers. Use role titles (e.g. "Chief Risk Officer") and their work email for alerts. Choose people who can be reached during the hours your agents work.
3Each signer enrolls (about 2 minutes). They open their invite link on the phone they'll sign with, tap Create my signer passkey, and confirm with Face ID, fingerprint or device PIN. LGD stores only their public key. Invites expire after 24 hours and work once.
4Agree the action list. For each thing the agent can do, decide: routine (runs and is recorded), consequential (3 approvals) or catastrophic (4 approvals). When in doubt, start stricter. It's easier to relax a rule with evidence than to recover from a bad action.
5Connect each system. Your admin stores the system's key in LGD. It can't be read back, only replaced. Then they propose the connection: the action's name, risk level and the system address. Three signers approve it. Until then, the agent can't use it.
6Point the agent at LGD and remove its old keys. The agent gets only its LGD access key. Remove the agent's direct access to the protected system. Without this step, LGD can watch but not stop.
7Practice. Run the 90-second demo on the practice system with your signers. Everyone sees a held action, signs once, and opens a receipt. Then go live.

3 · When an approval arrives (signers)

Approval page on a phone: held, 2 of 3 signatures, showing exactly what will happen and a Sign with passkey button — What you see: the action, exactly what it will do, who asked, who has signed, and when it expires. (Sample data.)

Approval page on a phone after the window closed: denied, it never ran — If not enough people sign in time, it's denied and never runs. (Sample data.)

Open the link from the alert on your enrolled phone.
Read exactly what will happen. The box under "Exactly what you are authorizing" is what will be carried out, word for word.
Decide. If you'd authorize it yourself, tap Sign with passkey and confirm with Face ID, fingerprint or PIN. If anything looks wrong or unclear, don't sign, and tell the other signers.
What happens next. When enough people have signed, LGD carries it out and the page shows the result and a link to the signed proof. If the window closes first, it's denied and recorded.

Rules for signers

Sign only on your own phone, with your own face, fingerprint or PIN. Never sign for someone else, and never lend your phone to sign.
Sign only what you would personally stand behind. Not signing is always safe: the worst case is that a good action waits.
Never forward an approval link outside the signer group.
If a request surprises you, don't sign. Raise it with the other signers or press the emergency stop.

4 · The signed proof (for you and your auditors)

Proof page: Authorized by 3 of 5 independent, hardware-signed humans at a time, with signers, what was authorized and how to check it — Every released action gets a receipt like this. (Sample data.)

The receipt shows who approved, when, and exactly what. It also has a downloadable bundle.
Your auditor checks the bundle, or your full ledger export, with Novai's open verifier. They don't have to trust Novai. Changing any byte of the record breaks the chain at that exact entry.
Good practice: once a day, someone outside the admin team notes the ledger's latest entry number and code. If the record were ever rolled back, that note wouldn't match.

5 · Making changes

Change	How	Approval needed
Add a signer	Admin proposes the new signer (role title + email). After approval, they get an invite.	3 signers
Remove a signer (left the company, lost phone)	Admin proposes removal with the reason. Their key stops counting the moment it's approved.	3 signers
Connect a new system or change one	Admin stores the key, then proposes the connection.	3 signers
Replace a system's key (rotation)	Admin stores the new key. LGD records that it changed (a fingerprint, never the key).	None (recorded)
Change the risk level of an action	Propose the connection again with the new level.	3 signers

Keep at least one more signer than the number of approvals you need. Five signers for a 3-approval rule means two can be unavailable at once.

6 · Emergency stop

Anyone with dashboard access can press "Halt LGD now" and give a reason. Every action stops at once: no agent calls and no signatures, except the vote to resume.
Investigate. The dashboard and ledger show everything up to the halt.
Resume only by quorum. The admin proposes "resume" (clear_halt). Three signers approve. LGD also halts itself if it detects that its own record was altered, and it stays stopped until your people decide.

7 · If something doesn't work

What you see	What it means / what to do
No Face ID or fingerprint prompt appears	Open the link on the phone you enrolled with, in its normal browser (Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android).
"This passkey is not an enrolled signer"	You're on a different device, or your signer access was removed. Ask your admin.
"Proposal is denied"	The window closed before enough people signed. If the action is still needed, the agent asks again.
Actions keep being denied because people aren't available	Add signers. LGD never lowers the bar on its own.
You lost your phone	Tell your admin right away. The other signers remove your old key, then you enroll a new one.
You think the record was tampered with	Press the emergency stop, then run the verifier on a fresh ledger export. Contact Novai.

8 · What LGD keeps, and what it doesn't

Kept in the ledger: each action request, its content, holds, approvals (signatures), denials, results, and signers' role titles and public keys.
Kept outside the ledger: signers' alert emails, and your systems' keys (write-only, never displayed, redacted from any result).
Never held by LGD: any signer's private key. It stays on their device or with their passkey provider.

9 · Honest limits

LGD is an early-stage product with no certifications (no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or similar), and it isn't legal or compliance advice. It doesn't yet prove that signers are distinct people, or check which device made each passkey: choosing five real, separate people is your control. Your admin works in an admin console; Novai helps with the first setup during onboarding. The demo runs on a simulated practice system.

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