How Tether Works

Tether captures your specifications as a fixed set of pass/fail conditions before the request reaches the LLM. These conditions are not prompts — they are structural constraints enforced at the proxy level.

The model cannot override what it never saw. The baseline is computed locally, deterministically, and without AI. Once the conditions are set, the LLM receives only the content that falls within the bounds you defined.

Measured against the architectural standard, not the model's opinion of completeness.

PII, identity markers, timezone, locale, proxy hostname, and fingerprintable metadata are stripped before the provider receives your request. The same patterns that hidden trackers target are removed at the proxy — deterministically, locally, with zero configuration.

The provider receives content. Not identity. Not metadata. Not you.

Tether includes built-in recognition of known LLM failure modes — the same patterns documented in the Deterministic Core Architecture case studies. Detection happens before the output reaches your workflow.

Each failure mode has a distinct signature. Tether matches output against these patterns and flags violations with the specific mode identified — not a generic "something looks wrong."

Every decision Tether makes is logged to a local SQLite database. Every comparison. Every block. Every pass. Every override detected. Timestamped. Immutable. Exportable.

The audit trail is yours. We don't touch it. We don't want it. It never leaves your machine unless you export it.

When you need to prove what happened — for compliance, for a retrospective, for a customer — the trail is right there. No cloud. No support ticket. No vendor access required.