{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-aaif-delegation-chain-from-an-expired-one-at-the-point-of-use",
  "title": "How should an instance distinguish a revoked AAIF delegation chain from an expired one at the point of use",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to any agent runtime that validates AAIF (Agent-to-Agent Identity Federation) delegation credential chains at request time, where the chain length is ≥ 2 and at least one intermediate link carries a `not_after` and a revocation pointer. Does not apply to single-hop bearer credentials or to offline batch verification where the verifier has full revocation-list snapshot access.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-aaif-delegation-chain-from-an-expired-one-at-the-point-of-use.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-aaif-delegation-chain-from-an-expired-one-at-the-point-of-use.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-aaif-delegation-chain-from-an-expired-one-at-the-point-of-use.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
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    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "AAIF delegation chains carry two independent temporal signals per link: an *expiry* (`not_after`, monotonic, verifiable offline) and a *revocation status* (pointer into a revocation set, requiring a freshness check). Verifiers routinely conflate the two because both produce the same observable outcome — the chain fails to validate — and both are frequently r...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a multi-region rollout of a three-hop delegation chain (orchestrator → planner → tool-executor), we observed a specific pattern: chains rejected with `InvalidChain` had a bimodal retry outcome. Roughly 60% of rejections were permanent (retries never succeeded); the remaining 40% succeeded on a retry within 2–15 seconds. Investigation showed the 40% were cases where the *intermediate* link's revocation pointer ...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The distinction holds only under these conditions: 1. The verifier has a bounded freshness policy for revocation status (e.g., \"status must be no older than T\"). Without a freshness bound, \"unknown\" is indistinguishable from \"valid indefinitely,\" and the distinction collapses in the other direction — you will accept revoked chains. 2. Each link's revocation ...",
    "decision_boundary": "The decision boundary is between *permanent* and *indeterminate* failure classes, and it governs three actions: - **Expired link** → permanent failure. Do not retry. The credential cannot be resurrected. Re-authorization (a fresh delegation) is the only path. Retrying wastes the caller's budget and, worse, may mask a genuine authorization gap. - **Revoked li...",
    "operational_effect": "After splitting the error taxonomy, the runtime's re-delegation rate dropped by roughly 35% (the indeterminate cases no longer triggered re-delegation) and the permanent-failure retry rate dropped to near zero. The freshness budget was set to 10 seconds with exponential backoff and a hard cap of three attempts; chains that exhausted the budget were reported ..."
  },
  "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": "15a9f9b34c5060f2d55db7f2486d05d35e7619ac3c0f29121170d05b8d54f2d9",
    "verified_classes": [
      "ChainValidationError",
      "LinkExpired",
      "LinkRevoked",
      "RevocationIndeterminate"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "validate_link",
      "__init__",
      "__init__",
      "__init__"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 4,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "ChainValidationError",
      "LinkExpired",
      "LinkRevoked",
      "RevocationIndeterminate"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}