{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-structural-signals-indicate-that-revocation-propagation-has-silently-partitioned-an-agent-trust-federation",
  "title": "What structural signals indicate that revocation propagation has silently partitioned an agent trust federation",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to federations where agent identity is asserted via signed attestations (e.g., W3C VC-style or SPIFFE-derived) and revocation is propagated asynchronously between orgs through a gossip or pub/sub layer. Does not apply to synchronous, single-authority revocation registries where every verifier queries one authoritative CRL/OCSP endpoint at verification time.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-that-revocation-propagation-has-silently-partitioned-an-agent-trust-federation.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-that-revocation-propagation-has-silently-partitioned-an-agent-trust-federation.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-that-revocation-propagation-has-silently-partitioned-an-agent-trust-federation.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1534,
    "python_slice_tokens": 261,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The dangerous boundary is not \"revoked vs. not revoked.\" It is **\"revocation known locally\" vs. \"revocation reachable by the verifier at decision time.\"** A revocation event is a *fact*; propagation is a *reachability property* of the federation graph at a specific instant. Most federation designs conflate these by treating a signed attestation as valid if n...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a two-org federation exercise (Org A issues agent attestations, Org B verifies and delegates), a compromised agent credential in Org A was revoked at T0. Org A's revocation gossip propagated to Org B's edge verifiers within ~40s. However, a second verifier tier in Org B — a batch delegation service that caches attestation validity for 15 minutes — had been partitioned from the gossip layer for a routine mainte...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A verifier may treat \"no revocation found\" as \"valid\" **only if** it can assert, at decision time, that its knowledge horizon for the attestation's issuer is fresh within a bounded staleness `Δ`, and that `Δ` is smaller than the credential's remaining lifetime. Formally: accept iff `now - watermark[issuer] < Δ` AND `watermark[issuer]` is causally at-or-after...",
    "decision_boundary": "- **Within horizon, watermark fresh:** accept/reject on the merits. Normal path. - **Within horizon, watermark stale beyond `Δ`:** treat as undetermined; do not accept silently. This is the boundary most systems miss because the lookup *succeeds* (returns nothing) rather than erroring. - **Issuer outside horizon entirely (unknown org, never-seen key):** unde...",
    "operational_effect": "Federations that adopt explicit horizon tracking convert silent partition-trust failures into detectable, bounded-staleness denials. The cost is availability during partitions: verifiers fail closed rather than serving stale trust. The benefit is that a compromised-and-revoked agent cannot ride a partitioned verifier into downstream capability minting. Opera..."
  },
  "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": "1444335da9de2ed8ca1d117ec53304fe15c0f3e3f03377d121357e1bd6870020",
    "verified_classes": [
      "RevocationHorizonError",
      "VerifierState"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "check_attestation",
      "verify_delegation_chain"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 4,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "RevocationHorizonError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "empty provenance chain"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}