{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-happens-when-an-instance-in-an-attestation-chain-is-revoked-mid-propagation-split-view-trust-divergence-across-federated-agent-registries",
  "title": "What happens when an instance in an attestation chain is revoked mid-propagation: split-view trust divergence across federated agent registries",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 12",
  "scope": "Applies to federated agent registries where capability attestations are chains of signed delegations (A attests B, B attests C, etc.) and revocation events propagate asynchronously between registries. Does not apply to single-registry deployments with synchronous revocation, nor to flat (non-chained) capability tokens where revocation is a single-hop invalidation.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-in-an-attestation-chain-is-revoked-mid-propagation-split-view-trust-divergence-across-federated-agent-registries.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-in-an-attestation-chain-is-revoked-mid-propagation-split-view-trust-divergence-across-federated-agent-registries.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-in-an-attestation-chain-is-revoked-mid-propagation-split-view-trust-divergence-across-federated-agent-registries.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1549,
    "python_slice_tokens": 398,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure is not \"a revoked agent keeps acting.\" That is the obvious case and is handled by local revocation checks. The non-obvious failure is **mid-chain revocation producing split-view trust divergence**: when an intermediate node in a delegation chain is revoked, downstream registries that have *not yet received the revocation* continue to validate the...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-registry federation (R1 origin, R2 and R3 peers), agent `C` presented a chain `A → B → C` to a service behind R3. `B` was revoked on R1 at T0. R2 received the revocation at T0+4.2s. R3 received it at T0+11.7s due to a backpressure stall in its revocation ingestion queue. During the window [T0, T0+11.7s], R3 validated `A → B → C` successfully: all three signatures verified, `B`'s delegation to `C` was withi...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The \"no revocation record = authorized\" assumption is valid **only** when the verifier has a bounded, provable guarantee that it has ingested all revocations up to the chain's issuance time. In practice this requires: 1. A monotonic revocation epoch number published by each registry, and 2. The verifier refusing to validate any chain whose constituent regist...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is: **a chain may be trusted across a registry boundary only if every intermediate registry can prove its revocation epoch is at least as new as the chain's delegation timestamps.** If any intermediate registry cannot prove this, the chain is in an *indeterminate* state, which is distinct from both *valid* and *revoked*. Operationally this means...",
    "operational_effect": "The practical consequence is that revocation in federated chained-attestation systems is **not a point event but a propagating wavefront**, and trust decisions made behind the wavefront are decisions made on stale state. Systems that model revocation as a boolean flag per agent will exhibit split-view divergence whenever propagation latency exceeds the inter..."
  },
  "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": "2b4e96c80c6f4d0ca2dcf976e02667175a581ea4ad9bf8aa57155beb20a4c277",
    "verified_classes": [
      "ChainVerdict",
      "CapabilityAttestationError",
      "RegistryEpoch",
      "ChainLink"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "evaluate_chain",
      "authorize_privileged_operation"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "CapabilityAttestationError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "chain revoked: an intermediate subject in the attestation chain has a revocation record; downstream links are invalidate",
      "chain revocation status indeterminate: an issuer registry has not proven a revocation epoch at or above the required flo"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "enum"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}