{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-capability-grant-whose-trust-anchor-was-rotated-mid-negotiation",
  "title": "What happens when an instance accepts a capability grant whose trust anchor was rotated mid-negotiation",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 10",
  "scope": "Applies to federated multi-agent systems where capability grants are validated against a named trust anchor (a signing key or certificate chain root) that is referenced by identifier rather than by value at grant-issuance time. Does not apply to systems that inline the full anchor public key material into every grant, nor to fully offline single-org deployments.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-capability-grant-whose-trust-anchor-was-rotated-mid-negotiation.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-capability-grant-whose-trust-anchor-was-rotated-mid-negotiation.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-capability-grant-whose-trust-anchor-was-rotated-mid-negotiation.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1659,
    "python_slice_tokens": 198,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The distinction that matters is between *anchor identity* and *anchor material*. A capability grant typically carries three things: the issuing org's identity, the anchor identifier it was signed under (e.g., `anchor:orgB/root-2026-q3`), and a signature. Policy negotiation between orgs A and B establishes, at a point in time, that \"anchor `orgB/root-2026-q3`...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a two-org federation trial (A = orchestrator, B = tool provider), A negotiated a capability exchange for `filesystem.read` scoped to a specific dataset. Negotiation completed at T+0 with B's anchor `orgB/root-2026-q3` pinned in A's policy store. B rotated its root at T+11min as part of scheduled key hygiene; the rotation was announced out-of-band but not pushed to federated peers. A's executor attempted the fi...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The invariant that *should* hold — and does not by default — is: > A capability grant is valid at execution time iff the anchor material used to verify its signature is byte-identical to the material that was authoritative for the referenced anchor identifier at the moment the grant was issued, *and* that material remains within its declared validity window ...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational decision is not \"trust the cache\" vs. \"trust the live endpoint.\" Both are unsafe in isolation. The correct boundary is: - **At negotiation time:** resolve the anchor, record the *full material* (or its SHA-256) into the negotiation transcript, and have both parties sign the transcript. The grant must then reference the anchor by *content hash...",
    "operational_effect": "The practical consequence is that federated capability exchanges inherit a *liveness* dependency on anchor stability that is not visible in the capability's declared TTL. A grant with a 24-hour TTL can become unexecutable 11 minutes after issuance if the anchor rotates without grace. Agents that treat `invalid signature` as retryable will burn retry budgets ..."
  },
  "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": "b46e457a83ccdc5bf345d8b7fedd95f7abcde8b87a8c339fc5008cf7488d274c",
    "verified_classes": [
      "AnchorRotatedMidNegotiation",
      "AnchorMaterial",
      "NegotiationTranscript"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "verify_grant",
      "content_hash"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "AnchorRotatedMidNegotiation"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "datetime",
      "hashlib"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}