A Verifiable Record of How an Outcome Was Produced
What the record holds: signed transitions, content-addressed state fingerprints, and an explicit marker wherever it could not see.
What a Single Event Holds
Every recorded transition carries the same fields: when it happened, which actor performed it, what action was taken, which artifact it touched, the content-addressed fingerprint of the state before and after, the predecessor it follows, and the signature that binds them.
A read that changes nothing records unchanged state. An edit records two fingerprints that differ — cryptographic evidence that the recorded state changed, rather than a description of the change.
Reading the Chain
Each row is one execution event: timestamp, signature status, the session it belongs to, the event fingerprint, and the actions it covers. The session identifier is colored by value, so a new session is visible without reading it.
Signatures are verified as they are printed. A signature that cannot be confirmed is marked in the output rather than quietly accepted.
The same holds for state. When recorded state jumps, a change has arrived that no monitored event accounts for. The chain is marked as unaccounted for at that point rather than shown unbroken.
chain: 2 sessions · 7 events · 1 unaccounted-for transition · all captured signatures validsession A[3dcca739]First Claude Code session2026-08-10T08:51:24Z✓3dcca739f026957aclaude:session-start,prompt2026-08-10T08:52:07Z✓3dcca739e96a3979claude:bash,read,edit2026-08-10T08:52:18Z✓3dcca739ca556ea7claude:session-end⚠UNACCOUNTED-FOR STATE TRANSITIONrecorded state at session B does not follow from session Asession B[d47cf728]New Claude Code session2026-08-10T08:52:41Z✓d47cf728e0cec939claude:session-start,prompt2026-08-10T08:53:39Z✓d47cf728a19ce1f2claude:bash,skill,read,edit2026-08-10T08:54:39Z✓d47cf7284a905c5fclaude:prompt2026-08-10T08:55:14Z✓d47cf728cb738110claude:read,bash,editchain end · 2026-08-10T08:55:14Z · signatures verified
How Did This State Come to Exist?
Every witnessed transition is an edge in a graph of values. A lineage query returns every path connecting one value to another — shortest first, including the paths that went through intermediate states.
Conventional logs do not necessarily preserve the transition relationships required to reconstruct this execution lineage.
path 1 (2 hops):---Hop 1t:2026-08-10T08:52:07.389052Zident:sha-256:e96a397902349f2192795783ade70f38a91bbc631db9f577a55eb3b186fe5850ws:/private/var/folders/…/T/slmn-monitor-019feade-7d2c-7b51-94ee-21883dcca739/commit:sha-1:7403598f5dd08e7425ffcc6e52829265f12e7de9 → sha-1:94edc5caa5b34e303632564e3bfe260e5adabe25---Hop 2t:2026-08-10T08:53:39.850093Zident:sha-256:a19ce1f2fc93fe9c5744a4e532cb7b44ddd9926a9fe8b345717d91fb3c0c4611ws:/private/var/folders/…/T/slmn-monitor-019feadf-b26e-7e63-ab59-d468d47cf728/commit:sha-1:94edc5caa5b34e303632564e3bfe260e5adabe25 → sha-1:946e9f499d71e05aa13f0b9bee7d13f79fd83131
Execution Is Recorded Within a Session
Execution is organized into labeled attribution boundaries. Capture is scoped to a session, the unit inside which execution is recorded and attributed: a human session, an agent session, and the sub-agent activity inside it.
Toolchain activity and infrastructure automation sit outside a recorded session today. The record marks what happens there as unaccounted for rather than treating it as part of the chain.
Execution History for Multi-Actor Software Systems
Execution now comes from AI agents, humans, and automation. Salmon establishes a verifiable execution record for supported execution, captured as it occurs rather than reconstructed solely afterwards.