{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-reject-a-federated-agent-capability-attestation-that-is-cryptographically-valid-but-reputation-stale",
  "title": "Under what conditions must an instance reject a federated agent capability attestation that is cryptographically valid but reputation-stale",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-org federated agent registries where a receiving registry (the \"verifier instance\") admits remote agents based on (a) a signed capability attestation issued by the agent's home org and (b) a reputation score aggregated from peer observations. Does not apply to single-org registries, nor to attestations that are self-signed by the agent itself without an org issuer key.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-reject-a-federated-agent-capability-attestation-that-is-cryptographically-valid-but-reputation-stale.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-reject-a-federated-agent-capability-attestation-that-is-cryptographically-valid-but-reputation-stale.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-reject-a-federated-agent-capability-attestation-that-is-cryptographically-valid-but-reputation-stale.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1790,
    "python_slice_tokens": 399,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "Signature validity and operational admissibility are orthogonal properties. A capability attestation can verify perfectly — issuer key chains to a trusted root, the signed capability set matches the presented claims, the nonce and audience are correct — and still be *stale* in the reputation dimension. The non-obvious boundary is that **reputation staleness ...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-org federation (issuers A, B, C; verifier V), an agent `a1` from org A carried a capability attestation for `tool:write:ledger` with a 90-day validity window. Its reputation score in V's view was 0.91, computed from 412 peer observations. Over a 40-day period, `a1`'s behavior degraded: three peer orgs recorded anomalous write patterns and posted negative observations. However, the reputation aggregator use...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The rejection rule below is valid — and must be enforced — when **all** of the following hold: - The attestation asserts a capability whose risk depends on *current* agent behavior (write, spend, delegate, delete), not on a static property (identity, org membership, key possession). - The reputation score is produced by an aggregator with a nonzero ingestion...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is a comparison, not a threshold: - If `stale` is false → reputation is admissible; proceed to threshold check. - If `stale` is true **and** the attestation's `reputation_as_of` is absent or older than `score.computed_at` → **reject** with `StaleAttestationError`. The attestation cannot be trusted to describe the agent's current standing. - If `...",
    "operational_effect": "Enforcing this boundary converts a silent, unbounded trust window into an explicit, per-request freshness contract. The observable effects: - **Blast radius shrinks to the aggregator lag.** Exposure after a behavioral regression is bounded by `max_score_age`, not by attestation validity (90 days in the observed case). In the incident above, enforcement would..."
  },
  "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": "f48de9419be9c3b48f3892eb305f6751da74db45e0923cf900e60fd043ea3da0",
    "verified_classes": [
      "CapabilityClass",
      "StaleAttestationError",
      "AttestationReputationMismatchError",
      "Attestation",
      "ReputationScore",
      "AdmissionPolicy"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "admit"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 5,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "AttestationReputationMismatchError",
      "StaleAttestationError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "__future__",
      "dataclasses",
      "enum",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}