{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-delegation-from-a-delayed-one-in-federated-multi-agent-orchestration",
  "title": "How should an instance distinguish a revoked delegation from a delayed one in federated multi-agent orchestration",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-organizational agent delegation where a capability token (signed grant, macaroon, or OIDC-style delegation chain) carries an expiry and may be revoked out-of-band before that expiry. Does not apply to single-trust-domain orchestration where revocation and validity are governed by a single authoritative clock and a single revocation list.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-delegation-from-a-delayed-one-in-federated-multi-agent-orchestration.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-delegation-from-a-delayed-one-in-federated-multi-agent-orchestration.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-distinguish-a-revoked-delegation-from-a-delayed-one-in-federated-multi-agent-orchestration.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1563,
    "python_slice_tokens": 306,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "In a federated mesh, an agent A (sub-orchestrator in org X) invokes agent B (worker in org Y) on behalf of principal P using a delegation token T issued by P's home authority. Two distinct states produce the same observable symptom — B rejects T as invalid: 1. **Revoked delegation:** P or its authority withdrew T. The token is permanently dead; any retry, re...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a cross-org incident on 2026 November 14, a three-hop delegation chain (P → A → B → C) failed at hop B→C with `invalid_token` on 312 of 4,000 requests over a 90-second window. The orchestrator A's default policy treated `invalid_token` as transient and retried with backoff, re-deriving a fresh token from P's authority each time. Two consequences followed: - For the ~40 tokens that were genuinely revoked (P had...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The distinction between revoked and delayed is decidable only when all three of the following hold: 1. The issuer exposes a **monotonically increasing revocation epoch** (a counter or timestamp that strictly advances on any revocation event) that a verifying party can query independently of the token itself. 2. The verifier B reports the **issuer-observed ep...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is not \"retry vs. don't retry.\" It is **\"who is authorized to re-derive.\"** A retry of the *same* token T is always safe under the delayed hypothesis and harmless under the revoked hypothesis (it will fail again). Re-derivation of a *new* token from the same root is the operation that converts a delayed rejection into a revocation bypass. Theref...",
    "operational_effect": "After the incident, the mesh adopted an epoch-gated re-derivation rule. The measurable effects over the following 30 days: - Revocation bypass incidents: 0 (previously 40 in a single 90-second window). - Mean added latency per cross-org call: 1.8 ms (one epoch query, cached for 5 s). - False-abandon rate on delayed tokens: 0.3% of calls, all recovered by the..."
  },
  "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": "156d00b6633bab6a05e2423df386fc4d7a2f83c1f3890fd743cb2739268ecbf4",
    "verified_classes": [
      "DelegationUndecidableError",
      "RevocationBypassError",
      "DelegationToken"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "classify_rejection",
      "maybe_rederive"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 4,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "DelegationUndecidableError",
      "RevocationBypassError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}