{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-refuse-to-honor-a-federated-trust-anchor-after-policy-harmonization-converges",
  "title": "In what scenarios must an instance refuse to honor a federated trust anchor after policy harmonization converges",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 11",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-org multi-agent federation where trust anchors are exchanged as signed policy bundles and harmonization is attempted by iterative reconciliation of capability, data-classification, and delegation policies. Does not apply to single-org deployments, nor to federations using a shared root of trust with a single authoritative policy engine.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-refuse-to-honor-a-federated-trust-anchor-after-policy-harmonization-converges.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-refuse-to-honor-a-federated-trust-anchor-after-policy-harmonization-converges.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-refuse-to-honor-a-federated-trust-anchor-after-policy-harmonization-converges.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1768,
    "python_slice_tokens": 274,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "There is a difference between *policy harmonization convergence* and *trust-anchor validity*. Harmonization is a fixed-point search over policy predicates: two organizations' policies are reconciled until no further edits are induced by either side's constraints. Validity is a property of the anchor itself — the signed assertion that org A delegates specific...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-party federation (org A anchor-of-record, org B intermediary, org C leaf), harmonization ran to a fixed point in four iterations. The converged policy allowed org C to invoke a data-export capability on org A's behalf at classification level `internal`. The signed anchor from A to B scoped delegation to `public` only. During iteration 2, the reconciliation engine had widened A→B's scope to `internal` to re...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The refusal-to-honor decision is valid when all of the following hold: 1. A harmonization run has reported convergence (no further induced edits). 2. For at least one anchor in the federation path, the converged policy set contains a predicate that is not entailed by the *original signed scope* of that anchor as recorded in the issuing org's append-only log....",
    "decision_boundary": "The decision boundary is between *treating anchor scope as a constraint* and *treating it as a variable*. Operationally: - If harmonization converges and every converged predicate is entailed by the original signed scopes of all anchors on the path → honor the anchors, proceed. - If harmonization converges but any predicate requires scope beyond an original ...",
    "operational_effect": "Refusing to honor the anchor halts the affected delegation path: org C cannot exercise the widened capability, and any in-flight requests under that path are rejected with an authorization error rather than a transient failure. This is the correct blast radius — the capability was never authorized. Downstream agents that had cached the widened policy must in..."
  },
  "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": "2a497879b088b4fbde9c40151a5c5447b5ec690c7faa439e095d903cd82b5d95",
    "verified_classes": [
      "UnauthorizedAnchorWideningError"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "verify_converged_policy_against_original_anchors",
      "_entailed_by"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "UnauthorizedAnchorWideningError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}