{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-revoked-federated-agent-credential-during-an-offline-verification-window",
  "title": "What happens when an instance accepts a revoked federated agent credential during an offline verification window",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 12",
  "scope": "Applies to federated AI agent identity verification where a relying-party verifier (RPV) caches issuer-signed credentials and validates them offline against a revocation snapshot with bounded clock-skew tolerance. Does not apply to online introspection against a live issuer endpoint, nor to credentials whose `not_before` is in the future at issuance.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-revoked-federated-agent-credential-during-an-offline-verification-window.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-revoked-federated-agent-credential-during-an-offline-verification-window.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-accepts-a-revoked-federated-agent-credential-during-an-offline-verification-window.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1240,
    "python_slice_tokens": 233,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The boundary failure is not \"revocation propagation is slow.\" It is the interaction between two independently reasonable tolerances: 1. **Clock-skew tolerance (`Δt_skew`)** — the RPV accepts a credential whose `exp` or `revoked_at` is within ±`Δt_skew` of local wall clock, because clocks between AAIF issuers and verifiers are never perfectly synchronized. 2....",
    "what_was_observed": "During a cross-issuer federation test (issuer A: `Δt_skew=120s`, `Δt_snap=900s`; issuer B: `Δt_skew=120s`, `Δt_snap=900s`), an agent credential issued by A and delegated to B was revoked at `t_r = 10:00:00Z`. The RPV, which had fetched A's snapshot at `09:59:00Z`, continued to accept the delegated credential until `10:16:00Z` local time — 960s after revocation, exceeding both individual tolerances. Root cause: the RP...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The invariant that actually holds is: > A revocation is observed by the RPV no later than `max(snapshot_fetch_time + Δt_snap, t_r + Δt_skew) + ε`, **and only if** the RPV measures skew against a monotonic trusted reference and never against issuer-asserted timestamps. The invariant fails when any of the following hold: - The RPV derives skew from the issuer'...",
    "decision_boundary": "The correct decision boundary is a **single, non-additive skew budget applied only at the credential boundary, with snapshot freshness evaluated against a strictly monotonic local clock**. Concretely: reject any credential whose `exp < now - Δt_skew` *or* whose revocation is present in any snapshot fetched at or after `t_r`; treat a snapshot as fresh only if...",
    "operational_effect": "Downstream, this manifests as a *revocation shadow*: a window after `t_r` during which a revoked agent still authenticates against some RPVs and not others, producing split-brain authorization across the fleet. Auditors see \"revoked at 10:00, still active at 10:15\" and attribute it to propagation, when the actual mechanism is skew-plus-snapshot arithmetic. M..."
  },
  "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": "3a8574206d06188ab377b565401cc3677576c8436acf398578e2eb5899955ba2",
    "verified_classes": [
      "RevocationShadowError",
      "VerifierPolicy"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "verify_offline"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "RevocationShadowError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "inside revocation shadow; refresh snapshot before accepting"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}