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System card

By Updated

Documentation of a deployed AI system as a whole (models, prompts, retrieval, tools, guardrails and oversight), where a model card documents one model 1. Its audience is deployers, authorities and the public; its evidence is the registry entry, the guardrail configuration and red-team results.

Developed in
ch. 14, Model cards, system cards and datasheets
Chapters
ch. 14, Development · ch. 15, Deployment
Contrast with
Model card
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Commonly confused

  • Model card versus System card

    Model card
    Structured, versioned documentation of a model (provenance, intended use, capabilities, evaluations and known failure modes) maintained as code.
    System card
    Documentation of a deployed AI system as a whole (models, prompts, retrieval, tools, guardrails and oversight), where a model card documents one model.

    The differenceOne model's documentation, against the deployed system's: models, prompts, retrieval, tools, guardrails and oversight.

    Why it mattersDeployers and authorities need the system view; a model card alone misses the controls around the model.

Where it is used

4 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Patterns that use this term

One pattern page uses the term.

  • Datasheet for datasets

    Documentation that accompanies a dataset with its motivation, composition, collection process, preprocessing, uses, distribution and maintenance, as proposed…

  • Transparency

    In NIST's framing, how far information about an AI system and its outputs reaches the people who interact with it: what happened.

  • AI system

    For governance, the object the AI definition brings into scope.

  • Guardrail

    A runtime control that inspects or mediates a model's or agent's inputs, outputs or tool calls and blocks, rewrites or escalates what breaks a policy, logging…

  • Deployer

    Under the EU AI Act, whoever uses an AI system under its own authority, other than in a purely personal, non-professional activity.

Sources

  1. [1] "System Cards, a new resource for understanding how AI systems work" (documents a whole system of models, AI and non-AI components, where a model card documents one model). Meta AI. 2022-02-23. https://ai.meta.com/blog/system-cards-a-new-resource-for-understanding-how-ai-systems-work/ (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). System card. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/system-card. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026systemcard,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{System card}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/system-card}
}