Operational Truth

Spry – Operational Truth Orchestration Tool

Transform Markdown into executable, verifiable, and auditable workflows that eliminate the gap between documentation and reality.

What is Operational Truth?

Operational Truth is the principle that compliance, operations, and security should be built on continuously verifiable evidence rather than static attestations or documentation that becomes outdated the moment it's created.

In a world where runbooks go stale, data pipelines lack transparency, and compliance evidence is scattered across systems, Spry ensures that what you document is exactly what executes—and what executes is exactly what you can prove.

Old Way
  • • Human attestation
  • • Documentation that describes
  • • Compliance as paperwork
  • • Isolated evidence
Operational Truth
  • • Machine attestation
  • • Documentation that executes and proves
  • • Compliance as living code
  • • Unified evidence warehouses

Operational Truth demands that organizations move beyond checkbox compliance toward systems that can demonstrate, in real-time, that their operational practices match their documented policies and regulatory requirements.

How Spry Delivers Operational Truth

1. Executable Documentation as the Single Source of Truth

Traditional documentation lies. It becomes outdated the moment processes change. Spry makes documentation executable—every code block runs, every output is captured, every workflow is reproducible. When your Markdown executes, it doesn't just describe your system—it is your system.

What this means for Operational Truth: Your runbooks, data pipelines, and compliance procedures are not just documents—they're executable specifications that prove what actually happened. No drift between documentation and reality. Audit trails are built into every execution.

2. Type-Safe, Deterministic Workflows

Spry is built on TypeScript and Zod, ensuring that every pipeline, every orchestration, and every data transformation is type-safe and deterministic. You don't guess what your Markdown will emit—you know with certainty.

What this means for Operational Truth: Reproducible results across environments. Predictable outcomes that can be verified. Machine-verifiable evidence that meets compliance requirements.

3. Composable Evidence Materialization

Spry emits structured artifacts—SQL, JSON, HTML, embeddings, vector stores—that serve as evidence of what was executed, when, and with what results. This composable approach means every workflow creates a verifiable audit trail.

What this means for Operational Truth: Every data pipeline generates evidence of data lineage and transformations. Every DevOps runbook creates proof of execution. Every compliance check produces machine-readable attestations. Evidence can be aggregated into evidence warehouses (like those managed by surveilr).

4. From Runbooks to Proof: DevOps & SRE

Traditional runbooks are static documents that tell you what to do. Spry runbooks execute what needs to be done and prove it was done correctly. For incident response, health checks, and infrastructure operations, Spry ensures that your procedures are:

  • Self-testing: Runbooks validate themselves before execution
  • Self-documenting: Every execution creates an evidence trail
  • Self-healing: Automated recovery procedures with full audit logs

What this means for Operational Truth: Incident response procedures that can't go stale. Change management with complete provenance. Continuous validation of operational readiness.

5. Data Pipelines with Built-In Lineage

Spry allows you to define data pipelines as Markdown documents where lineage, dependencies, and metadata are expressed inline. Unlike traditional ETL/ELT tools where lineage is an afterthought, Spry makes it intrinsic.

What this means for Operational Truth: Every data transformation is documented and executable. Data quality checks are built into the pipeline, not bolted on. Compliance teams can trace data from source to destination with machine-verifiable evidence.

6. AI Context Engineering with Verifiable Provenance

When building RAG pipelines or LLM context systems, Spry ensures that every prompt, embedding, and retrieval step is documented, versioned, and reproducible. You don't just build AI systems—you build AI systems you can prove work as intended.

What this means for Operational Truth: Explainable AI pipelines where every step is auditable. Reproducible prompt engineering with version control. Evidence-based validation of model context and retrieval.

7. Compliance as Living Code

Spry enables Policies as Code—defining, executing, and version-controlling compliance and security policies using executable Markdown. This means your compliance framework isn't a static document; it's a continuously validated, machine-attested system.

What this means for Operational Truth: Policies that execute themselves and generate evidence. Automated compliance checks across infrastructure and data. CI/CD enforcement with auditable proof of compliance state.

8. Bridging the Documentation-Reality Gap

The core problem Spry solves is the gap between what organizations say they do and what they actually do. By making documentation executable, Spry ensures these two things are one and the same.

What this means for Operational Truth: No more "compliant insecurity"—you can prove your controls work. Real-time visibility into operational state vs. documented state. Continuous verification instead of point-in-time audits.

Why Operational Truth Matters in Spry

Organizations face a persistent problem: they document their processes, but those processes change. They write runbooks, but the runbooks go stale. They claim compliance, but their evidence is scattered, incomplete, or impossible to verify.

Spry solves this by making documentation and execution inseparable. When your workflows are defined in executable Markdown:

For Developers

Reproducible pipelines with built-in documentation

For SRE Teams

Runbooks that test and execute themselves

For Data Engineers

Pipelines with lineage and quality checks built in

For AI Engineers

Context systems with full provenance

For Compliance Teams

Machine-verifiable evidence instead of manual attestations

For Auditors

Proof, not promises

Operational Truth in Action with Spry

Example 1: DevOps Runbook

Traditional Runbook

Describes how to restart a service

Spry Runbook
  • ✓ Executes the restart procedure
  • ✓ Validates the service is running
  • ✓ Logs all outputs
  • ✓ Generates evidence of successful execution
  • ✓ Updates the evidence warehouse automatically

Example 2: Data Pipeline

Traditional ETL

Runs transformations

Spry Data Pipeline
  • ✓ Defines transformations in Markdown
  • ✓ Executes SQL, captures outputs
  • ✓ Validates data quality inline
  • ✓ Documents lineage automatically
  • ✓ Creates verifiable evidence of data provenance

Example 3: Compliance Check

Traditional Audit

Reviews documentation

Spry Compliance Workflow
  • ✓ Defines policy requirements in Markdown
  • ✓ Executes automated checks against live systems
  • ✓ Generates machine-readable evidence
  • ✓ Timestamps and versions all results
  • ✓ Feeds evidence directly into compliance frameworks (like Opsfolio)

The Spry Advantage: Orchestration Meets Evidence

What makes Spry uniquely suited for Operational Truth is its role as an orchestration tool. It doesn't just execute code—it orchestrates:

Multiple Languages

SQL, Bash, Python, JSON, HTML

Multiple Systems

Databases, APIs, LLMs, vector stores

Multiple Outputs

Structured artifacts, embeddings, reports

Multiple Workflows

Data pipelines, DevOps automation, AI context, compliance checks

And it does all of this while maintaining complete provenance, deterministic execution, and verifiable evidence.

A Framework, Not a Feature

Operational Truth through Spry is not a feature you turn on. It's a comprehensive framework for rethinking how operational work is documented, executed, and verified. It requires shifting from:

Documentation as a static artifact → Documentation as executable code
Evidence as manual collection → Evidence as automatic materialization
Compliance as attestation → Compliance as continuous verification

Spry makes this shift not just possible, but practical, reproducible, and auditable.

Moving from Compliant Insecurity to Operational Truth

Many organizations suffer from Compliant Insecurity—they tick compliance boxes but remain fundamentally insecure because their attestations are human-based, their documentation is outdated, and their evidence is fragmented.

Spry breaks this cycle by:

Making documentation executable: What you document is what executes
Automating evidence generation: Every workflow produces verifiable evidence
Enabling continuous compliance: Policies execute and verify themselves
Creating unified provenance: All outputs are traceable and auditable

Conclusion: Truth Through Execution

Operational Truth in Spry means that your documentation doesn't describe reality—it creates and proves reality. Every Markdown file you write becomes a living, executing, self-verifying system that bridges the gap between policy and practice, documentation and execution, attestation and evidence.

When you use Spry, you're not just automating workflows. You're building systems that can prove they work, systems that generate evidence as a natural byproduct of execution, and systems that make Operational Truth not just an aspiration but an operational reality.

Get Started with Spry for Operational Truth

Ready to transform your operational workflows into verifiable, executable systems of record?

Spry is part of the Operational Truth ecosystem, working alongside surveilr (Evidence Warehouse), Opsfolio (Compliance as Code), Fleetfolio (Security Environment), Qualityfolio (Test Management as Code), and DB Yard (Evidence PaaS)