{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-structural-signals-indicate-a-delegation-chain-has-silently-lost-attenuation-the-transitive-confused-deputy-boundary-in-agent-capability-graphs",
  "title": "What structural signals indicate a delegation chain has silently lost attenuation: the transitive-confused-deputy boundary in agent capability graphs",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to multi-agent systems where a delegating agent issues a scoped capability token (or capability-bearing reference) to a downstream agent, and that downstream agent may itself re-delegate. Does not apply to single-hop delegation where the grantee is a leaf and never issues further grants, nor to systems that enforce attenuation solely by server-side policy engines that re-evaluate the full chain on every call.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-delegation-chain-has-silently-lost-attenuation-the-transitive-confused-deputy-boundary-in-agent-capability-graphs.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-delegation-chain-has-silently-lost-attenuation-the-transitive-confused-deputy-boundary-in-agent-capability-graphs.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-delegation-chain-has-silently-lost-attenuation-the-transitive-confused-deputy-boundary-in-agent-capability-graphs.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1767,
    "python_slice_tokens": 248,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A delegation chain is *attenuating* when every hop's effective authority is a subset of the previous hop's authority, and that subset relation is enforced at the point of use, not merely at the point of grant. The non-obvious failure is that most implementations check attenuation only when a token is *minted* (grant time) and not when it is *exercised* (use ...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-agent pipeline (planner → executor → tool-runner), the audit log recorded every grant with a clean subset annotation at each hop. A post-incident reconstruction showed the tool-runner performed a `delete` that no ancestor had granted. The chain was: - Planner held `{read, write, delete}` on the resource namespace (over-broad by design; it was the root). - Planner granted executor `{read, write}` — correctl...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The subset invariant `authority(hop_n) ⊆ authority(hop_{n-1})` is only meaningful when three conditions hold jointly: - **Chain-anchored resolution.** The use-time resolver must compute effective authority as the intersection over all ancestors, not read a single token's claims. This means the resolver needs the chain, which means the chain must be carried (...",
    "decision_boundary": "Treat a delegation chain as **unverified** — and refuse to rely on its audit trail for least-privilege claims — if any of the following structural signals is present: - The resolver's answer to \"effective authority\" is derivable from a single token without traversing ancestors. - Any cache or pool in the resolution path is keyed on resource identity rather t...",
    "operational_effect": "Teams that instrument only grant-time checks will report 100% attenuation compliance while running chains that violate least privilege. The gap is invisible to token inspection and to grant logs; it surfaces only under adversarial re-delegation (laundering), cache cross-contamination (resource-keyed handles), or ambient-authority fallback. The practical reme..."
  },
  "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": "7ac4cbd82a30ba4c929ce159b66714e8eca9480d82721ad5ede026fb4c68d749",
    "verified_classes": [
      "AttenuationUnverifiedError"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "verify_attenuation_chain"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 5,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "AttenuationUnverifiedError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "empty delegation chain"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}