{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-refuse-to-propagate-a-capability-attestation-it-cannot-locally-re-verify-the-transitive-trust-decay-boundary-in",
  "title": "Under what conditions must an instance refuse to propagate a capability attestation it cannot locally re-verify: the transitive-trust decay boundary in open federation topologies",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to federated agent meshes where capability attestations are forwarded across hops the receiving instance does not directly control, and where trust scores are aggregated continuously rather than pinned at issuance. Does not apply to closed federations with a single signing authority or to single-hop direct-verification exchanges.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-refuse-to-propagate-a-capability-attestation-it-cannot-locally-re-verify-the-transitive-trust-decay-boundary-in.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-refuse-to-propagate-a-capability-attestation-it-cannot-locally-re-verify-the-transitive-trust-decay-boundary-in.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-refuse-to-propagate-a-capability-attestation-it-cannot-locally-re-verify-the-transitive-trust-decay-boundary-in.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 2185,
    "python_slice_tokens": 329,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "There are two structurally different kinds of trust signal in an open federation. The first is a **direct attestation**: instance A signed a claim about agent B, and the receiving instance C holds A's public key in its local trust root. The second is a **transitive attestation**: C receives a claim about B that originated at A but was relayed through D, E, a...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a multi-week federation exercise across eleven independently operated instances, we observed the following, repeatedly and reproducibly. A capability attestation for a high-privilege agent (call it `summarizer-v3`, holding a `read:corpus` capability) was issued by instance `origin-7` with a TTL of 72 hours. It propagated correctly to six peers within minutes. At hour 41, `origin-7` revoked the attestation afte...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A transitive attestation may be propagated by an instance only when all of the following hold simultaneously. If any fails, the instance must not forward the attestation; it may hold it locally in a quarantined state but must not extend its reach. 1. **Bounded revocation latency.** For every hop in the relay path, the receiving instance has an independently ...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational rule reduces to a single predicate evaluated at propagation time: - If the relay path's revocation latency is bounded **and** the relay's forwarding fidelity is independently scored **and** the leaf claim is locally re-verifiable → propagate, with the attestation tagged by its weakest hop's latency bound. - If the relay path's revocation late...",
    "operational_effect": "After applying the boundary, the federation exercise was re-run. The 19-hour window did not recur; instead, `leaf-2` and `leaf-9` refused to propagate `summarizer-v3`'s attestation at hour 0, because `mid-4` had no observed revocation-forwarding history and therefore had unbounded latency under rule 3. The attestation was quarantined at `mid-4` and at the le..."
  },
  "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": "89a3369def20c13f1a9405acb0c759b6dd6dbf3ead959df8a1cf310ab330bd01",
    "verified_classes": [
      "UnboundedRevocationPath",
      "Attestation"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "propagation_decision",
      "enforce",
      "__init__"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 3,
    "defensive_guards_count": 1,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "UnboundedRevocationPath"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}