Decision Paleontology: An Audit Trail for Agents, Next to What Article 12 Actually Requires
When an agent picks a tool, rejects an action or plans a path, the only record is whatever the system chose to keep. MYND Decision Paleontology is my project for keeping more of it. The README calls it a decision forensics platform for AI agents: what inputs were considered, what knowledge was consulted, what alternatives were evaluated, and why the final choice was made.
What the README describes
The feature list includes decision excavation of the reasoning chain, D3.js decision trees showing alternatives considered and rejected, lineage tracking across multi-step trajectories, bias and pattern detection, and audit-trail generation. The stack is a Fastify backend with Redis and PostgreSQL for event ingestion and storage, JWT authentication, rate limiting and Docker Compose. The README says architecture docs, an API reference, a deployment guide and a user guide are included.
What Article 12 says
Article 12 of the EU AI Act, Regulation 2024/1689, says high-risk AI systems shall technically allow for the automatic recording of events, logs, over the lifetime of the system. The logging must support identifying situations that may result in risk or a substantial modification, and the post-market monitoring the Act requires. The European Commission's AI Act Service Desk summarizes it as logs that help identify risks, support post-market monitoring and track system operation.
Where the two differ
Article 12 asks for event logs. Decision Paleontology aims at something richer, a reconstruction of why a choice was made. Whether a particular deployment's records satisfy Article 12 depends on its intended purpose and on the rest of the Act, and that is a legal question I am not answering here. The README mentions compliance-ready reports for regulated industries, and I read that as a goal for the tool, not a certification.
Sources
MYND Decision Paleontology README: github.com/yethikrishna/mynd-decision-paleontology. European Commission AI Act Service Desk, Article 12 Record-keeping: ai-act-service-desk.ec.europa.eu/en/ai-act/article-12. Regulation text via euailaw.com/artificial-intelligence-act/article/12-record-keeping/.