Identity governance products exist to solve three problems. Answer auditors' questions about who has what access, when they got it, and why. Automate the joiner, mover, and leaver lifecycle so people get the access they need when they need it and lose it when they do not. And give leadership the context to make informed access decisions through an effective approval system.
That is the job. We built Narrative because the existing tools are not doing it well.
What the incumbents actually are
SailPoint spent 18 years bolting identity management onto a compliance tool. Saviynt spent 10 years bolting lifecycle management onto a cloud analytics engine. We built the thing they are both converging toward, without the architectural debt.
Okta IGA is lifecycle management with an access request workflow layered on top. It inherits its data model from an identity provider that was never designed for governance. Every feature on the IGA side has to work around that constraint.
What the market actually needs is a system where governance is the starting assumption. Where every interaction, from a user requesting access to an auditor pulling a report, operates on the same coherent model.
What Narrative is
Narrative is a context-aware identity engine.
When someone requests access, they see everything they need to know it is the right request. Role context. Peer access patterns. Policy constraints. The system tells them whether their request aligns with how their peers work, whether a policy is going to block it, and what they should expect as the approval turnaround.
When an approver reviews that request, they see the same depth. Who else in this role has this access. What policies apply. What risk signals exist. Every approval is an informed decision, not a rubber stamp.
This works because Narrative is built around attribute-based access control and the concept of exception access. There is expected access, which is what the business has defined as normal for a role. And then there are exceptions. Every exception is visible, justified, and tracked. That distinction is fundamental to how the system thinks. It is not a layer added on top. It is not something you will find in Okta IGA or SailPoint. It is the architecture itself.
The audit story
When auditors ask questions, we do not just show who has access. We show how they got it. Every rule created, every approval granted, every change made, linked together in a searchable timeline that connects seemingly unrelated objects into a single coherent story.
AI connects the dots you might not see on your own, flagging anomalies, suggesting policies, and identifying risk before it becomes a finding. The auditor asks for a sample of access grants for the last quarter. You query the timeline. The evidence is already linked to the HR event that triggered the request, the policy that authorized it, and the approval that granted it.
Who we built this for
Narrative is built for the companies that are outgrowing spreadsheet-driven access governance but cannot stomach a multi-year SailPoint implementation or the licensing model that comes with it. Mid-market SaaS, fintech, healthcare, defense contractors. Organizations where the auditor is asking harder questions every cycle and the existing tools are not keeping up.
It is built for the security leader who wants a governance program that runs on autopilot, the engineering team that wants an access model they can manage as code, and the auditor who wants to pull evidence without filing a ticket.
June 2026 alpha
The alpha opens in June to a small group of design partners. You get the full product, direct access to our team, and a say in the roadmap. In return, we learn what we need to learn to make this the category-defining tool the market has been waiting for.
If you want in, join the waitlist below. We respond personally to every request.
This is Narrative.