AXIS Documentation / Testing & Adoption / Limitations

Limitations

Pilot scopeRoadmap items

AXIS is a pilot-grade control layer. This page documents what it cannot do today, so deployments make no false assumptions.

Integration scope

Production integration today is the HTTP path with single statements; the native wire listener is a lab POC, disabled by default.
Extended Query (P/B/E) is planned, not implemented; drivers that rely on prepared statements fail closed on the wire path.
COPY (both COPY FROM and bulk) is fail-closed; JDBC batch is not supported (PIPELINING_SUPPORT=false).
SQLAlchemy AxisRoutingSession is a v1 routing adapter, not a universal ORM solution.

No native authentication on the AXIS HTTP listener in v1; JWT context is opt-in in v0.9 and off by default.
Identity fields are unverified evidence inputs — AXIS is not an authentication system.
No RBAC/SSO; approvals are single-operator gated (one token).
Approval is consent, not execution: the client must retry with approval_id.

The audit WAL hash chain detects tampering but is not an external tamper-proof ledger, consensus, attestation, or KMS-backed service.
Evidence is local; confidentiality and non-repudiation are not claimed at v1.
Runtime logs (GET /logs) are operational visibility only, not durable proof.
Deleting the JSONL projection does not affect verification; the WAL is canonical.
Signed bundles are optional and do not prove identity claims.

AXIS session IDs are not trusted as equivalent to PostgreSQL backend sessions; pooled backends do not guarantee affinity.
Multi-instance or multi-AXIS deployments are not part of the v1 model; the guarantee is local and process-bound.
No horizontal scale story is claimed; single-process pilot architecture.
Prepared EXECUTE dry-run fails safe as unresolved; sessions are in-memory and lost on restart.
No automatic retry; after execution_state: unknown the client must verify before re-submitting.

TLS/mTLS are partial: variables exist, pilot runs plaintext on the trusted lab network; production review gates remain open.
Bypass paths exist by design: direct DB access, emergency bypass mode, unencrypted lab traffic.
AXIS protects operations that pass through AXIS; it cannot stop direct database writes.
PostgreSQL does not log per-request AXIS decisions; AXIS evidence is the local trail.

Not compliance-certified; no external audit or third-party penetration test claimed.
v0.6 milestone: "controlled demos, local review, non-production pilot" — explicitly not production enterprise software.
Identity, key management and ledger features required for compliance regimes are roadmap items.

Error registry and edge-case documentation continue to evolve; some codes may be added or renamed (check the Changelog).
The wire RFC is a draft; behavior is subject to change until stable.
Approvals do not expire on policy rollback in v0.8 — retry re-evaluates under the then-active policy.
Operator token unset = unblocked local dev (operator_auth_enabled: false); this must never be shipped.

Read this page together with Security Model and Security Review before any deployment decision.