User Guide

The Helixor Decision Runtime is the decision core of the Helixor platform. It evaluates a versioned decision pack inside your own process. You hand it a payload; it returns an action from the pack's closed set, the rules that fired, a remedied version of the payload and a receipt hash, usually in microseconds.

What the runtime does#

A decision pack describes a decision: what to extract from the input, which rules must hold, which action to take when one does not, and how to repair the payload. The runtime loads the pack once and evaluates it for every payload you pass in. Packs cover operational decisions such as eligibility, limits, routing and release.

The runtime ships with one pack built in, so every guide can run with no setup. This built-in example pack (data protection, compliance.regulatory_pii_guard.v1) inspects text for sensitive data (Social Security numbers, card numbers, health record IDs, email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses) and decides whether the text can leave your system. The guides use it to illustrate calls that work the same for any pack.

When to use it#

• Hard rules on a hot path. Decisions that must be exact and cheap enough to run on every request.
• Gating what leaves or enters a step. Check requests, model prompts and responses, or exported records against a pack before they move on.
• Decisions you have to explain later. Every result names the rules that fired and carries a receipt hash you can log.

Use the hosted Helixor reasoning API instead when the decision needs evidence you do not have locally, multi-step reasoning, or a calibrated probability of being correct.

Start here#

Follow the Quickstart from your first hosted sample to your own pack:

1. Try hosted samples. Read the input, action, triggered rules and receipt. No setup or signup.
2. Clone and explore locally. Run the public helixor-decision-demos walkthroughs with Python and inspect their recorded decisions. No signup.
3. Get a Developer license and customize. Install the runtime, copy an example playbook, change a rule, compile and compare results.
4. Create a pack in Studio. Import policy artifacts from the clone, adapt them, test, review and release with provisioned Studio access.

Start the walkthrough or browse the demo repository tour.

How this guide is organized#

Planned See Adaptive strategies for the proposed strategy loop, evidence requirements and effects on playbook authoring.

Status of this release#

This documentation describes runtime version 0.3.1. Features that are designed but not yet shipped are marked Planned wherever they come up, so you can tell what works today from what is coming. 0.3.0 fixed most of the defects documented for 0.2.1, and 0.3.1 changes how the runtime finds your license (helixor.hxlic, one search order), removes helixor-pack mint-license and takes the sales engine out of the runtime. Where behavior changed, the page says "Changed in 0.3.0" or "Changed in 0.3.1". The defects that remain are stated as "Known issue in 0.3.1" where they apply, with a workaround, and collected in Troubleshooting.