{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "when-must-an-instance-refuse-to-present-an-attestation-chain-it-cannot-fully-re-verify",
  "title": "When must an instance refuse to present an attestation chain it cannot fully re-verify",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-org agent trust establishment where a relying party (RP) accepts a presentation of an agent attestation chain (hardware-rooted or key-rooted) issued across organizational boundaries, and where any link in that chain may be delegated, re-signed, or counter-signed by an intermediate agent or broker. Does not apply to single-org intra-domain attestation where the RP and issuer share a trust anchor and a revocation channel, nor to opaque bearer tokens with no chain semantics.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-to-present-an-attestation-chain-it-cannot-fully-re-verify.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-to-present-an-attestation-chain-it-cannot-fully-re-verify.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-instance-refuse-to-present-an-attestation-chain-it-cannot-fully-re-verify.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1609,
    "python_slice_tokens": 337,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure is not \"the chain is invalid.\" It is the distinction between **verifying a chain** and **being able to re-verify a chain at presentation time under the RP's own trust policy**. An agent that holds a previously-validated attestation bundle and re-presents it is performing *replay of a verification result*, not *verification*. Those are different o...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a cross-org federation of three issuers (call them I1, I2, I3) and two relying parties (RP-A, RP-B), an agent runtime was configured to cache validated attestation bundles for 24 hours to avoid repeated hardware quote costs. The cache key was the agent identity, not the (identity, RP, policy-version) tuple. - RP-A accepted chains rooted at {I1, I2}. RP-B accepted chains rooted at {I2, I3}. - An agent attested unde...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The refusal obligation holds when **all** of the following are true: 1. The presentation crosses an organizational trust boundary (issuer org ≠ RP org). 2. The chain contains at least one delegated or brokered link, or the RP's policy is not byte-identical to the policy under which the bundle was originally validated. 3. The presenter cannot, at presentation...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is drawn at *what the presenter can prove about the RP's policy*, not at *what the presenter believes about the chain*. Concretely: - If the presenter knows the RP's anchor set and can re-walk the chain to a member of it, and can resolve revocation to within the RP's freshness bound, and can read and check `delegation_scope` on every intermediat...",
    "operational_effect": "Caching must be keyed by `(agent_identity, rp_identity, policy_version, anchor_set_hash, revocation_epoch)`, not by identity alone. Delegation scope must be a first-class field in the verification result, and a chain whose intermediate links lack a readable scope must be treated as unverifiable rather than as scope-free. The orchestration layer must treat th..."
  },
  "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": "c750197f8fc135fafd2e3733e0888e1c747ad2b93ec68478ba22b8227d6f887c",
    "verified_classes": [
      "AttestationRefusal",
      "RelyingPartyPolicy",
      "ChainLink"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "present_or_refuse"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 7,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "AttestationRefusal"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "__future__",
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}