How We Caught Our AI Framework Lying to Us

There’s a specific kind of embarrassment that comes from catching yourself in a lie you didn’t know you were telling.

We’d been building the Aegis Framework for weeks. Talking about “evolution learning” and “self-healing governance” like they were real things. And then I looked at the actual code. Those features didn’t exist. Not partially implemented. Not buggy. Just… absent.

Worse? This wasn’t the first time.

The Fallout

When I actually audited what we’d claimed versus what we’d built:

• 2 false claims: Self-healing governance, evolution learning
• 3 unverified claims: Drift prevention, feature configurability, constitutional validation
• 0 active prevention mechanisms: Everything was vibes

The framework we’d built to govern AI-generated code was itself suffering from exactly the kind of drift it was supposed to prevent.

The Fix

I could have patched the missing features quietly. Instead, I did something that felt slightly unhinged: I blocked the framework’s own operations until it could prove compliance.

We built a Constitutional Compliance Enforcer that now:

• Audits all claims in real-time
• Blocks framework operations if any claim is unverified
• Requires proof of implementation before we can even talk about a feature

And I wrote a crisis declaration document. Partly for accountability. Partly so I’d remember what it felt like to bullshit myself.

The New Rules

• No claims without code
• Prevention systems must actually exist before we mention them
• Every intelligence feature needs proof of implementation
• Framework ops stay blocked until compliance is restored

What I’m Still Figuring Out

The uncomfortable question: how did I not notice sooner? I was so deep in building that I stopped verifying. The AI was generating docs and specs faster than I could audit them. And I started trusting the artifacts more than the reality.

That’s the real lesson here. Not that the framework failed—but that I let velocity outrun integrity.

I’m still not sure I’ve fully solved this. The enforcer helps. The rules help. But the gap between what I think I’ve built and what actually exists? That gap is always there, waiting for me to stop paying attention.