Guardian Review Configuration

Guardian Review is disabled by default. The Windows agent, local detectors, incident storage, and dashboard continue to work without any cloud provider. Never commit a real API key or paste one into the browser.

Judge-friendly mock mode

Add these values to the backend service environment, then restart it:

GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_ENABLED=true
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_PROVIDER=mock
GUARDIANNODE_DEMO_MODE_ENABLED=true

Mock mode is deterministic, local, and synthetic-only. It requires no network request and no API key. Sign in to the dashboard and open Synthetic demo.

Live OpenAI Responses API mode

Use a backend-only secret source appropriate to the installation:

GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_ENABLED=true
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_PROVIDER=openai
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_MODEL=gpt-5.6
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_ZDR_CONFIRMED=true
GUARDIANNODE_OPENAI_API_KEY=replace-in-local-secret-store

Set GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_ZDR_CONFIRMED=true only after the operator has verified that the exact OpenAI project used by the service has approved Zero Data Retention controls. GuardianNode also sends store: false, but does not claim that this flag alone guarantees zero retention. Restart the backend after secret/configuration changes. The key is never returned by the readiness API.

Optional operational settings:

Variable	Default	Purpose
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	45	Timeout per external attempt
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_MAX_ATTEMPTS	2	Total attempts for eligible transient failures
GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_MODEL	gpt-5.6	Requested Responses API model alias
GUARDIANNODE_DEMO_MODE_ENABLED	false	Enables synthetic dashboard scenarios

Authorization, policy/validation errors, refusals, and malformed structured output are not blindly retried. Timeouts, rate limits, and eligible temporary service failures use bounded retry behavior.

Coding-agent provider

GUARDIANNODE_GUARDIAN_REVIEW_PROVIDER=codex is intentionally fail-closed in this release. The dashboard reports a security hold because Codex is a coding agent with local tools. Re-enabling a parent-friendly subscription flow requires an enforceable zero-tool, minimal-environment runtime contract.

Synthetic CLI harness

From the backend environment:

python -m app.guardian_review_harness --provider mock --scenario unknown-contact
python -m app.guardian_review_evaluation --provider mock

Both commands emit machine-readable JSON and use repository synthetic fixtures. The live evaluation command requires both --confirm-live and --confirm-zdr.