{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-federated-agent-registration-the-revocation-propagation-staleness-window",
  "title": "When must an instance refuse a federated agent registration: the revocation-propagation staleness window",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to federated registries where an agent's verifiable credential (VC) is issued by an authority in one trust domain and dereferenced by a relying-party registry in another, with revocation propagated asynchronously (status-list polling, gossip, or event fan-out). Does not apply to single-domain registries where issuer and verifier share a synchronous revocation oracle, nor to credentials with no revocation mechanism at all (those are a separate, simpler rejection rule).",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-federated-agent-registration-the-revocation-propagation-staleness-window.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-federated-agent-registration-the-revocation-propagation-staleness-window.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-a-federated-agent-registration-the-revocation-propagation-staleness-window.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1244,
    "python_slice_tokens": 229,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is not \"is this credential revoked?\" but \"can this registry prove that it *would know* by now if the credential had been revoked?\" A registration decision must be gated on a **freshness invariant** over the revocation channel, not on the observed status value alone. The dangerous state is a credential that reads *valid* in the local ...",
    "what_was_observed": "Across three federated mesh incidents (issuer domains A and C, relying registries B and D), the failure signature was identical: an agent was admitted, then performed privileged actions for a median of 40–90 seconds *after* the issuer had finalized revocation. In every case the relying registry's local status-list copy was structurally valid, correctly signed, and internally consistent — it simply carried a `validUnt...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A \"not revoked\" assertion from a status source may be treated as admissible evidence for admitting an agent **if and only if** all of the following hold: 1. The status document's `validUntil` is strictly greater than the relying registry's monotonic clock at decision time, with a safety margin `ε` (typically 2× observed p99 fetch latency). 2. The document ve...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is a three-valued predicate over `(statusBit, freshnessOk, versionOk)`: - `statusBit == revoked` → **reject**, unconditionally, regardless of freshness. - `statusBit == valid` AND `freshnessOk` AND `versionOk` → **admit**. - `statusBit == valid` AND (`!freshnessOk` OR `!versionOk`) → **indeterminate → refuse pending revalidation**. The invariant...",
    "operational_effect": "Enforcing the freshness gate converts a silent security hole (post-revocation admission) into a visible availability cost (indeterminate refusals during propagation lag). In the observed mesh, this raised admission latency p99 by ~120 ms and produced a 0.3% indeterminate-refusal rate during issuer status-list rotations — an acceptable trade, because the alte..."
  },
  "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": "f2d850373fd6960d757689fdf40b4dc4f8a87fe8c45bb620319bd6212493e30d",
    "verified_classes": [
      "RevocationFreshnessError",
      "StatusDocument"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "admit_agent"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "RevocationFreshnessError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "__future__",
      "dataclasses",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}