DEV Community: Nuera RDL

Nuera Quicksilver: building a governed operating system for company decisions with Sanity

Nuera RDL — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:30:48 +0000

This is my entry for the Sanity Challenge, Path Two: Vibe-Code Something Strange. Code: Nuera Quicksilver (MIT). Sanity project ID: f87t11g1. Judge guide · public synthetic demo dataset.

What the build became

I set out to see whether a company’s operating rules could be treated as structured content—not buried in documents—and used by an agent without handing the agent the authority to act. Nuera Quicksilver grew into an operating console: state an objective, inspect a proposed plan, see the deterministic authorization result and its evidence, route the decision to a human when required, then inspect the recorded history.

The surprising part is not that a model can write a plan. It is that the rules around the plan are explicit and inspectable. Sanity holds typed company data: entities and capabilities, policies with scope and supersession, evidence with confidence and contradiction references, metrics, decisions and process definitions. The NQC Kernel is ordinary TypeScript with no model inside. It checks capability and authority, computes risk, and fails closed if a process definition is invalid. The agent can suggest; it cannot approve its own proposal.

The app is deliberately a narrow vertical slice, not a real-world ERP or autonomous factory controller. Approve and reject are human actions. “Execute” is simulated and writes an auditable demo decision/metric state; no real equipment, email, webhook or external business account is controlled by this demo.

The build process—and the parts that stayed rough

The work started by locking the company schema and the boundary between model and kernel. From there the project added the deterministic kernel, a seed scenario with conflicting policies and contradictory evidence, a Next.js console, and Sanity Context reads. A later pass wired in a real Sanity Knowledge Base and an independent advisory reviewer, then extended the decision lifecycle so the process and its guards are content in Sanity rather than hard-coded workflow prose.

The repository’s build log records the actual handoffs: an early architecture-through-hardening phase with MiniMax Agent, a later integration/deployment phase with Claude Code via Cowork, and developer-directed manual work in VS Code for terminal operations and secret entry. This is an AI-assisted build, not a claim that one coding session produced every line. The log also records bugs found and fixes made rather than presenting the process as a perfect first pass.

There are tradeoffs and unfinished proof. The current npm run verify path is credential-free and the README reports 1,282 tests. Live Context endpoints were verified by hand. Tests in CI use fakes for model and Context services; the prior build’s live stress/e2e results were not rerun against this dedicated project. There have been no real-user usability sessions. Model-evaluation calibration and real integrations remain unproven. The parity matrix and build log spell out the gaps.

Try the project

Live app: project-quicksilver.vercel.app
Source and build log: github.com/nueraresearch/project-quicksilver
Judge walkthrough: FOR-JUDGES.md
Sanity project ID: f87t11g1
Public dataset: inspect policies in the synthetic demo dataset. The app itself uses the private production dataset; the public dataset is synthetic and contains no customer data.

The live app needs sign-in. Judges can choose Use an access token instead on /sign-in and use the challenge judge token:

qs_mh3a1ExwuX9QYAbsgjAFve6QdXgReucf6bU3Quug8Pk

It grants supervisor access to the demo app, and actions are recorded in Sanity. Please use it only to evaluate the entry. Execution is simulated; it does not operate external systems.

sanitychallenge

Nuera Quicksilver: an agent that reads your company through Sanity Context—and cannot approve its own work

Nuera RDL — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:17:54 +0000

This is my entry for the Sanity Challenge, Path One: Ship an Agent That Queries Real Content. Code: Nuera Quicksilver (MIT). Sanity project ID: f87t11g1. Judge guide · public synthetic demo dataset.

An agent that can propose work, but cannot authorize itself

Nuera Quicksilver is a company-operations console built around a simple boundary: the agent proposes; a deterministic kernel decides what is allowed; a human approves consequential work. The company’s policies, evidence, people, agents, capabilities, objectives, workflows, decisions and metrics live as structured Sanity documents. The agent reads that model through Sanity Context instead of treating a folder of prose as the whole source of truth.

The company model includes typed documents for organizations, departments, entities, capabilities, policies, objectives, workflows, evidence, decisions and metrics. References and fields matter: the kernel can check who holds a capability, which policies apply or supersede one another, whether policies conflict, and what risk follows from an action. Those checks are deterministic TypeScript—not another model prompt.

The assistant uses two Sanity Context read paths: GROQ queries against the live structured dataset, and a Sanity Knowledge Base built from policy and evidence documents. The Knowledge Base contains 12 evidence and policy documents; the judge guide describes how to inspect source-backed answers and the public dataset. The seeded scenario includes two policies in conflict and evidence that challenges the proposed explanation for a production issue. A keyword search can find a sentence; it cannot, by itself, resolve references, scope, supersession, authority and conflicting evidence into a governed decision.

The decision lifecycle is also modeled as content in Sanity. Its states, transitions and structured guards are evaluated by the kernel. The model may recommend an action, but it does not get an approval, execution or publishing tool. Approvals and rollbacks require a human. “Execute” in this demo records a simulated state change and metric; it does not operate production equipment or call external business systems.

Try it

Live app: project-quicksilver.vercel.app
Judge guide: FOR-JUDGES.md
Source: github.com/nueraresearch/project-quicksilver
Sanity project: f87t11g1
Public synthetic dataset: query the public demo dataset. The live app uses a private production dataset; demo contains synthetic data with the same schema and policy/evidence examples, not customer data.

The live console requires sign-in. For challenge judging, open /sign-in, choose Use an access token instead, and use this judge access token:

qs_mh3a1ExwuX9QYAbsgjAFve6QdXgReucf6bU3Quug8Pk

The token acts as a supervisor in the live deployment. Actions are recorded under its entity in Sanity, so please use it only for challenge evaluation. Execution is simulated; no external system is changed. The judge guide walks through the decisions inbox, the approval boundary, audit trail, chat citations and dataset queries.

What is and is not proven

The repository's credential-free verification command is npm run verify; the README reports 1,282 tests. The live Context endpoints were verified by hand, while the CI tests use fakes for model and Context services. The dedicated project has not had the previous challenge build's live stress test and end-to-end test rerun against it. There have not been task-based usability sessions with real users. No real email or webhook has been sent, and execution is a simulation. Those limits are documented in the judge guide and README.