---
title: "Governance Service Architecture"
description: "Governance Service's relationships with the other platform services, its workflow pattern, and its operational boundaries."
source: "Guardian Platform"
---
Governance Service coordinates the product workflows that appear in Guardian and in governance integrations. This page describes product responsibilities, not implementation internals.

## Platform Relationships

| Component           | Product role                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Guardian            | User interface for project, policy, control, declaration, review, indicator, and credential workflows, and for Governance Programs, agent assessments, and agent certifications.                                                                   |
| Auth Service        | Validates users, API keys, service accounts, roles, and permissions.                                                                                                                                                                               |
| Integrity Service   | Registers governance evidence, creates lineage records, and supports credential workflows.                                                                                                                                                         |
| PDFGen              | Renders and signs downloadable reports for applied policies; see [PDFGen Overview](../pdfgen/overview.mdx).                                                                                                                                        |
| Control Plane       | Supplies registered agents' configuration and profiles to agent assessments, confirms an agent is active before it is certified, and receives each agent certification so the gateway can enforce it, reading its status again when it is revoked. |
| Object storage      | Stores evidence attachments and related files.                                                                                                                                                                                                     |
| Platform data store | Preserves governance records, evaluation history, activity logs, and configuration state.                                                                                                                                                          |

## Workflow Pattern

1. A user or integration acts within a project.
2. Auth Service confirms identity and permissions.
3. Governance Service updates the relevant governance record.
4. Supporting services handle attachments, reports, lineage, or credentials when the workflow requires them.
5. Guardian and integrations read the updated state.

## Operational Boundaries

Governance Service should not be used as a general document store, identity provider, or certificate authority. It manages governance workflows and delegates identity, storage, document generation, and integrity-specific work to the platform components that own those responsibilities.

## Related

- [Governance Service Overview](./overview.mdx) — what the service owns and what it depends on
- [Auth Service Overview](../auth-service/overview.mdx) — the component that confirms identity and permissions
- [Integrity Service Overview](../integrity-service/overview.mdx) — the component that records evidence, lineage, and certificates
- [Governance Service Configuration](./configuration.mdx) — the connection settings for each platform component
- [Object Storage](../deployment/object-storage.mdx) — supported providers for attachment storage
- [Control Plane Overview](../control-plane/overview.mdx) — the agent registry behind assessments and certifications