{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-happens-when-an-instance-revokes-an-agent-identity-that-is-still-mid-handshake-across-a-federated-trust-boundary",
  "title": "What happens when an instance revokes an agent identity that is still mid-handshake across a federated trust boundary",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to federated agent-identity systems where revocation is propagated asynchronously across trust domains (e.g., OIDC-style token introspection caches, SPIFFE bundle rotations, capability-token revocation lists) and where an agent may hold a valid-but-stale credential during an in-flight handshake. Does not apply to single-domain synchronous revocation, nor to systems where every request re-validates against the issuing authority at zero latency.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-revokes-an-agent-identity-that-is-still-mid-handshake-across-a-federated-trust-boundary.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-revokes-an-agent-identity-that-is-still-mid-handshake-across-a-federated-trust-boundary.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-revokes-an-agent-identity-that-is-still-mid-handshake-across-a-federated-trust-boundary.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1858,
    "python_slice_tokens": 290,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious distinction is between *revocation propagation latency* and *revocation acceptance latency*. Most federated designs reason about the first: how long until domain B learns that domain A revoked agent `A:agent-7`. They under-specify the second: once B learns, how long do already-admitted sessions and in-flight handshakes continue to be honored....",
    "what_was_observed": "During a cross-domain handshake stress test, agent `A:agent-7` was revoked by its home domain at T+0. The revocation was published to the trust-domain revocation feed at T+0.4s. Domain B's introspection cache had a TTL of 300s and a negative-caching path that only refreshed on cache miss. Consequently: - At T+0.4s the feed carried the revocation. - At T+12s the agent initiated a fresh handshake against domain B. The ...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The boundary failure is *only* reachable when all of the following hold simultaneously: 1. Revocation is propagated asynchronously (push or pull) rather than synchronously consulted per-request. 2. At least one relying party caches a positive authentication or introspection result with a TTL greater than zero. 3. At least one credential issued post-authentic...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational decision is not \"should we cache\" — you must cache, or introspection becomes the bottleneck. The decision is *what the revocation wavefront is allowed to overtake*. Concretely: - **Bound the acceptance window explicitly.** Define a maximum revocation acceptance latency `R_max` (the time from revocation publication to guaranteed non-acceptance...",
    "operational_effect": "In practice, the failure manifests as a *silent authority leak*: a revoked agent continues to act, with valid signatures, valid tokens, and clean logs, for a duration determined by the slowest of {cache TTL, token lifetime, session persistence}. It is invisible to per-request error rates because there are no errors — every check passes. It is invisible to re..."
  },
  "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": "b45eab4af88e5f54c1c172485755c19f549b318325437323b5ce539c6d033545",
    "verified_classes": [
      "RevocationAcceptanceViolation",
      "RevocationRecord",
      "EdgeState"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "enforce_revocation_boundary",
      "apply",
      "admit",
      "audit_session"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 4,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "RevocationAcceptanceViolation"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}