89 days to EU AI Act enforcement.
August 2, 2026 — high-risk AI obligations under the EU AI Act become enforceable. Penalties up to €15M or 3% of global revenue, whichever is higher. AttestProto is the open-source per-decision attestation toolkit that satisfies Article 12 (logging) + 13 (transparency) + 14 (oversight) + 17 (QMS) + 19 (retention) — and adds GDPR Article 22 + ISO 42001 + Colorado AI Act for free.
Who this is for
You're a Head of Compliance, CTO, or DPO at a 50-500-person EU SMB operating an AI system in one of the Annex III high-risk categories: employment, lending, education, essential services, law enforcement, migration, justice, biometrics, or critical infrastructure.
Big 4 quoted you €100-300k for "EU AI Act compliance review." Your counsel quoted another €40-80k. You don't have €400k for paperwork. You need a working solution that produces audit-ready evidence per decision, self-hosted, with no data leaving your infrastructure.
This is that solution. It's free.
What Article 12 actually requires
Article 12 mandates that high-risk AI systems "shall technically allow for the automatic recording of events ('logs') over the lifetime of the system." The logs must enable:
- Identifying situations that may result in a risk or substantial modification (12(2)(a))
- Facilitating post-market monitoring (12(2)(b))
- Monitoring the operation of high-risk AI systems (12(2)(c))
Article 19 requires those logs to be retained for at least six months. So the practical six-month clock is already ticking — the organisations best positioned for August 2 are the ones who started logging in February.
AttestProto generates Article 12 logs as cryptographically-signed attestations, persists them in a tamper-evident ledger (SQLite or Postgres), and includes a Bitcoin OP_RETURN anchor option for the strongest possible "verifiable in 2030 even if vendor disappears" guarantee.
What the toolkit auto-maps
EU AI Act Art. 12 (record-keeping)
Every attestation IS an Article 12 log entry. Cryptographically signed, schema-validated, persistable.
Art. 13 (transparency to deployers)
Auto-flag missing 'instructions for use' attribution per high-risk system.
Art. 14 (human oversight)
Track human-oversight evidence per decision; flag when missing.
Art. 17 (quality management system)
Documented QMS evidence captured automatically across attestations.
Art. 19 (retention ≥ 6 months)
Ledger retains logs indefinitely by default; configurable retention with audit-trail.
Art. 26 (deployer obligations)
Separate deployer-side attestation surface for input data appropriateness + monitoring.
GDPR Article 22
Automated-decision-making + right to human intervention — auto-flagged when consent / contract / human-review tags are missing.
ISO 42001:2023
Clauses 7.4 (communication) + 8.3 (operational risk treatment) auto-tagged.
Colorado AI Act
SB 24-205 high-risk duty + consumer disclosure for any US sales touching Colorado consumers.
30-second example — what your DPA sees
$ attestproto compliance hiring-decision-2026-05-04.json --json
[
{
"framework": "eu-ai-act",
"citation": "Art. 12 (record-keeping)",
"severity": "info",
"detail": "High-risk AI system; attestation provides Art. 12 automatic record-keeping artefact."
},
{
"framework": "eu-ai-act",
"citation": "Art. 14 (human oversight)",
"severity": "medium",
"detail": "High-risk system without human-oversight tag; Art. 14 requires effective oversight measures by natural persons."
},
{
"framework": "gdpr",
"citation": "Article 22(1) (automated individual decision-making)",
"severity": "medium",
"detail": "Solely-automated decision producing legal effects; Article 22(1) prohibits unless consent, contract, or law authorises."
},
{
"framework": "iso-42001",
"citation": "Clause 7.4 (Communication)",
"severity": "info",
"detail": "Attestation supports clause 7.4 documented information."
}
] Why self-hosted matters here
GDPR makes a SaaS attestation vendor a data processor. That's a data processing agreement, an additional risk register entry, and possibly a cross-border data transfer mechanism (SCCs / adequacy decision) if the vendor is based outside the EEA.
AttestProto is self-hosted by default. The ledger runs on your infrastructure. No data leaves. No DPA needed for the tool itself. No transfer mechanism. No vendor-risk question for procurement.
Run on Docker (docker compose up), Kubernetes, a single Mac
mini, or a €10/month Hetzner VPS. The ledger is < 100 MB of code + your
Postgres or SQLite database.
Pricing for SMBs
- Self-hosted: free forever, MIT license
- Cloud Free: 100 000 attestations / month, no credit card
- Cloud Pro: €0.0005 per attestation above 100 000, SLA 99.9%
- Audit-Triggered Enterprise: €0/month, €500 per regulator-grade evidence package
Compare with the €100k+ Big 4 review you were quoted. Or the €5-10k/month custom-logging engineering you've been writing in-house.
Get the toolkit
AttestProto is built by Lex Oleksiienko (Calgary, AB). Open source, MIT. Not legal advice. The compliance rules engine implements the publicly- available text of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689; consult your DPO and counsel before relying on it for regulator-facing deliverables.