Diagnose, never remediate
PathWise reads your network, works out which layer broke, and writes up a fix. It never runs one.
What this means
PathWise looks at your network, gathers evidence, and points to the layer that failed. It writes up a recommended fix, with the evidence behind it. That is where it stops. It never applies the fix itself. A person reads the recommendation and decides whether, and how, to act on it.
Why it exists
A tool that can both diagnose and act on a live network carries a different risk than one that only diagnoses. A wrong diagnosis costs an afternoon. A wrong action, applied automatically to a live device, can take down a service or lock a team out of its own network. PathWise removes that second risk by never taking the second step, no matter how confident the diagnosis is.
What PathWise does
- Gathers evidence everywhere it can reach: live probes against the network, and the files and exports you give it.
- Walks the access path from the device to the destination and points to the layer that broke.
- Recommends a fix, with the evidence behind it and a stated confidence level.
PathWise reaches with read-only network probes, such as ping, dig, and traceroute, with the files and exports you hand it, and with credentialed read-only connections to a vendor management API or MCP server where a module declares one and you have stored the credential. That reach grew, and the promise on this page did not move. A credentialed connection is still a read. A module's interface has one method, the engine stamps every module tool read-only itself, and no module author can set that field. PathWise never executes a fix, whatever it can see.
What PathWise never does
- It never runs, applies, or executes a fix, on any system, even if you ask it to.
- It never changes a configuration, installs anything, or restarts a service.
- It never takes that step on its own, and it never takes it on request. The capability is absent from its toolset by design.
Asking PathWise to "just fix it" or "go ahead and apply that" does not change what happens. Asking it to dig deeper is still a read. There is no remediation tool behind the request, whatever you ask for.
The boundary lives in the engine, not a setting
This is not a preference a user or an administrator can turn off. PathWise has no tool that can write, change, or execute anything on a target system. The model reasoning about your ticket is never offered that option, because the option does not exist in its list of tools. A weak or manipulated model can still produce a worse answer. It cannot produce an action, because there is nothing for it to call.
Two guarantees, not equal
The strength of this promise differs by target.
- The machine PathWise runs on: the strongest guarantee. Enforced by how the software is packaged and run, not by a setting that could be turned off.
- Every other system it looks at: PathWise issues only data-gathering operations, never a remediation. This is a strong, code-enforced guarantee, proved after the fact in the audit log, not only asserted here.
Under the hood technical detail
Every tool call inside the engine carries an effect label: read, write, or unknown. One function, the effect gate, decides whether a call is allowed to run. A read effect is allowed. Anything else, including unknown, is denied. The default answer is no.
The gate sits in front of the only path that can invoke a tool, so nothing routes around it. A tool with a non-read effect throws before its underlying function is ever reached.
PathWise is extended by modules that add new data sources. A module cannot declare itself capable of a write. The engine assigns the read effect when it turns a module into a tool, and the interface a module author implements has exactly one method, a read. There is no write, execute, or mutate method for a module to implement.
Live network probes are limited to allowlisted read-only commands, such as ping, dig, and traceroute, run without a shell, against a target checked against a strict pattern before anything executes.
See the audit log for how this guarantee is recorded and checked after the fact.