{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-delegated-capability-token-that-is-structurally-valid-but-temporally-incoherent-across-federation-boundaries",
  "title": "When must an instance refuse a delegated capability token that is structurally valid but temporally incoherent across federation boundaries",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-org multi-agent federations where capability tokens (signed, attenuated, policy-scoped grants) are minted by an issuer org and delegated transitively through intermediate agents to a consuming instance in a different trust domain. Does not apply to single-org delegation, nor to tokens whose entire validity window is contained within one issuer's clock authority.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-delegated-capability-token-that-is-structurally-valid-but-temporally-incoherent-across-federation-boundaries.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-delegated-capability-token-that-is-structurally-valid-but-temporally-incoherent-across-federation-boundaries.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-delegated-capability-token-that-is-structurally-valid-but-temporally-incoherent-across-federation-boundaries.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 2010,
    "python_slice_tokens": 490,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **structural validity** and **temporal coherence**. A capability token can pass every cryptographic and schema check — correct signature chain, correct attenuation (scope is a subset of the parent grant), correct audience binding, correct policy reference — and still be unusable, because the *time* under which each hop in ...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-org federation (A issues, B intermediates, C consumes), agent `C/worker-7` received a delegated `write:dataset` capability originally minted by `A/policy`. The chain was `A → B → C`, with attenuation at B narrowing scope from `write:*` to `write:dataset`. All signatures verified. The attenuation proof checked out. C's local policy snapshot (replicated from A every 90 seconds) showed the grant live for anot...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A delegated capability token is safe to honor at consumer `C` **iff** there exists an instant `t` such that: 1. `t` is within the issuer's `[not_before, not_after]` window as evaluated by the issuer's clock; 2. `t` is within every intermediate's countersign window as evaluated by that intermediate's clock; 3. `t` is within C's accepted window as evaluated by...",
    "decision_boundary": "The instance must **refuse** the token — raising a hard error, not a retryable one — when any of the following hold: - The consumer's revocation watermark is older than the token's `not_before` plus the maximum observed replication lag for the issuer's feed. (The consumer cannot prove the grant was un-revoked at minting time.) - Any hop's `policy_evaluation_...",
    "operational_effect": "Treating temporal incoherence as a first-class refusal condition changes three operational behaviors. First, it forces every consumer to maintain a *causal* revocation watermark per issuer, not a wall-clock freshness check — the watermark must be a version vector or equivalent, because wall-clock freshness is exactly the signal that lies here. Second, it mak..."
  },
  "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": "d09e9c74ea84fde8a7df4e569b3f06864c6b3b07dfc0412e145acb9f6d9780fb",
    "verified_classes": [
      "TemporalIncoherenceError",
      "Hop",
      "ConsumerView"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "assert_temporal_coherence",
      "__init__"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 5,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "TemporalIncoherenceError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "empty delegation chain",
      "stale revocation watermark",
      "token within clock-skew shadow",
      "cross-hop causal inversion"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}