Kinetic Gain Audit

A WordPress plugin that writes a tamper-evident, MySQL-backed governance audit log — every publish, plugin toggle, role change, and security-setting change linked into a SHA-256 hash chain you can verify in one click.

Tools → KG Audit
  ✓ Chain verified — 1,284 events, tamper-evident hash chain intact.

The MySQL-lane member of the Kinetic Gain Protocol Suite — it brings the Suite's tamper-evident audit-stream-py convention to the 40%+ of the web that runs on WordPress + MySQL.

Why it's different from every other activity-log plugin

Most WordPress audit-log plugins write rows you have to trust. This one writes a hash chain: each event stores a SHA-256 hash over its own canonical JSON plus the previous event's hash. Altering a row, deleting one, or inserting one out of band breaks the chain — and the admin screen's one-click verifier detects it mathematically.

The chain uses the same canonical-JSON + SHA-256 convention as audit-stream-py, so an auditor verifies your WordPress log with the exact rules they use across the rest of the Suite — and you can forward every event to a central audit-stream-py spine for a portfolio-wide verifiable narrative.

What it records

The MySQL schema

CREATE TABLE wp_kg_audit_events (
  event_id   BIGINT UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  created_at DATETIME NOT NULL,
  kind       VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
  source     VARCHAR(191) NOT NULL,
  payload    LONGTEXT NOT NULL,
  prev_hash  CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
  hash       CHAR(64) NOT NULL,
  KEY kind (kind),
  KEY created_at (created_at)
);

hash = sha256(canonical_json({created_at, kind, source, payload, prev_hash})). event_id is a store-assigned index and is not part of the signed body (it isn't known under AUTO_INCREMENT at append time) — verification excludes it, exactly as the append path does.

Architecture

WP hook ──► KG_Audit_Recorder ──► KG_Audit_Store.append()
                                      │  computes prev_hash + hash
                                      ▼
                              wp_kg_audit_events (MySQL)
                                      │
                                      ├──► KG_Audit_Admin   (view + verify_chain)
                                      └──► KG_Audit_Forwarder ──► audit-stream-py (optional, non-blocking)

KG_Audit_Hasher is pure PHP — no WordPress dependency — so the chain logic is unit-tested without a WP runtime (php tests/test-hasher.php).

Install

1. Copy to wp-content/plugins/wp-kinetic-gain-audit/.
2. Activate — the events table is created on activation.
3. Tools → KG Audit to view + verify.
4. Optional: paste an audit-stream-py /events URL to forward events off-site (best-effort, non-blocking).

Develop / test

php tests/test-hasher.php      # pure-PHP hash-chain tests, no WordPress needed
find . -name '*.php' | xargs -n1 php -l   # syntax-lint everything

CI runs php -l across PHP 8.0/8.1/8.2/8.3 and the hasher unit test on every push.

Lite vs Pro

This repo is the Lite edition (free, GPL). The Pro roadmap: configurable event kinds + custom hooks, verified CSV/JSON export, scheduled off-site hash anchoring to a well-known URL, multisite aggregation, and a wp kg-audit verify WP-CLI command. See the WordPress plugin business plan for the productization model.

Composes with

License

GPL-2.0-or-later (WordPress plugins inherit WordPress's license).