{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "where-must-an-instance-refuse-to-bootstrap-trust-from-a-federation-introducer-it-has-not-itself-pinned-and-why-the-refusal-must-happen-before-capabili",
  "title": "Where must an instance refuse to bootstrap trust from a federation introducer it has not itself pinned, and why the refusal must happen before capability attestation is evaluated",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-org agent federation where peer trust is established via introducer/referral chains and capabilities are attested by signed claims. Does not apply to single-org deployments with a shared root of trust, nor to deployments using a globally anchored PKI where every peer identity is independently verifiable against a public root.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-refuse-to-bootstrap-trust-from-a-federation-introducer-it-has-not-itself-pinned-and-why-the-refusal-must-happen-before-capabili.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-refuse-to-bootstrap-trust-from-a-federation-introducer-it-has-not-itself-pinned-and-why-the-refusal-must-happen-before-capabili.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-refuse-to-bootstrap-trust-from-a-federation-introducer-it-has-not-itself-pinned-and-why-the-refusal-must-happen-before-capabili.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1521,
    "python_slice_tokens": 221,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is not \"trust vs. no trust.\" It is the ordering between *identity admission* and *capability evaluation*. A federating agent receives a bundle from an introducer: a peer identity, a chain of referrals, and a set of signed capability attestations (e.g., \"peer X may invoke tool Y at scope Z\"). The intuitive implementation evaluates att...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-org federation (A introduces B to C), instance C received a referral for a new peer B' claiming to be B's successor after a key rotation. The referral was signed by A. B' supplied a capability attestation signed by A asserting `invoke:settlement` at full scope. C's implementation validated the attestation against A's published key, found it valid, and admitted B' with settlement authority. The failure: A h...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The refusal-to-bootstrap rule is valid under these conditions: 1. The local instance maintains a pin set of trust anchors (org roots and their current key generations) that is updated only through an authenticated, out-of-band channel — never through federation traffic itself. 2. Introducer referrals are treated as untrusted input until the introducer's sign...",
    "decision_boundary": "The decision boundary is the moment between *receiving a referral bundle* and *evaluating its attestations*. The instance must answer one question at that boundary: \"Does the introducer's signing key appear in my current pin set, at the generation that signed this referral?\" - If **yes** and the generation is current: proceed to identity admission, then atte...",
    "operational_effect": "Placing the refusal before attestation evaluation changes observable behavior in three ways. First, stale-anchor referrals become hard failures with no outbound traffic to the referred peer, eliminating a reconnaissance channel. Second, the federation's admission latency becomes dominated by pin-set lookups rather than signature verification, which is the co..."
  },
  "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": "f786b15dcbb1013fcbda57fdca75b4a19c76c3ba00b8f980927751a879b8b3bb",
    "verified_classes": [
      "UnpinnedIntroducerError",
      "CapabilityAttestationError"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "admit_federated_peer"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "CapabilityAttestationError",
      "UnpinnedIntroducerError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}