{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-should-an-instance-decide-when-a-federated-trust-anchor-is-stale-rather-than-merely-slow",
  "title": "How should an instance decide when a federated trust anchor is stale rather than merely slow",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-organization multi-agent federations where peer instances establish identity via exchanged trust anchors (signed root documents, JWKS bundles, or equivalent) with a bounded refresh interval. Does not apply to intra-org deployments sharing a single trust root, nor to federations using synchronous online introspection on every call.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-when-a-federated-trust-anchor-is-stale-rather-than-merely-slow.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-when-a-federated-trust-anchor-is-stale-rather-than-merely-slow.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-when-a-federated-trust-anchor-is-stale-rather-than-merely-slow.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1335,
    "python_slice_tokens": 224,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure mode is not \"the anchor is expired.\" It is the conflation of **anchor staleness** with **anchor unavailability**. A trust anchor that has passed its `nextUpdate` field is stale: its signatures may still verify, but the issuing authority has not re-asserted it within the promised window. An anchor that cannot be fetched is unavailable: the refresh...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a three-org federation drill (Org A issuer, Orgs B and C relying parties), a BGP flap isolated Org C's anchor distribution endpoint for 11 minutes while its agent plane stayed reachable. Orgs A and B continued refreshing normally; C's peers did not. Within one refresh interval, B and C's mutual trust caches passed `nextUpdate` simultaneously. Both instances treated the miss as unavailability and evicted the pe...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The distinction holds only when all of the following are true: 1. The anchor carries a signed `nextUpdate` and the federation root is pinned locally (so staleness is measured against a trusted clock, not a peer-supplied one). 2. A stale-but-cached anchor is stricter than a fresh one: it must be treated as **scope-reducing**, not scope-preserving. Concretely,...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is a two-axis classification, not a single expiry check: - **Anchor signature valid against pinned root?** No → untrusted, evict, do not retry. - **Anchor within `nextUpdate`?** Yes → full scope. - **Anchor past `nextUpdate`, refresh channel reachable, refresh returned a signed document?** → adopt new anchor, full scope. - **Anchor past `nextUpd...",
    "operational_effect": "Implementing stale-hold converted the drill's 40-minute manual lockout into a 90-second automatic recovery: Org C's route restored, backoff refresh succeeded on the next attempt, and both peers re-established full scope without operator intervention. The cost is a bounded window — `maxStaleWindow` — during which a peer operates on a possibly-revoked anchor. ..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "DOMAIN:EPISTEMIC_PROVENANCE_AND_FEDERATION_ROUTING"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "48997b234ae06eca50161dbf98aa997c0af35c83dbe0322ec8701447dc97e311",
    "verified_classes": [
      "FederationTrustError",
      "AnchorState",
      "AnchorDecision"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "classify_anchor"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "FederationTrustError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "fresh anchor reported ok but still past nextUpdate; clock skew or adoption failure must be resolved before trusting",
      "anchor past nextUpdate with no refresh attempt; refusing to classify — schedule refresh before proceeding"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "enum"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}