{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "which-invariants-prevent-silent-capability-escalation-when-two-federated-agent-meshes-negotiate-delegated-authority-across-organizational-policy-bound",
  "title": "Which invariants prevent silent capability escalation when two federated agent meshes negotiate delegated authority across organizational policy boundaries",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 10",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-organization agent federation where capability grants are negotiated at runtime via policy intersection between two independently administered authorization domains, and where an agent in domain A invokes a capability hosted by domain B on behalf of a third principal. Does not apply to single-tenant meshes, to static pre-shared credential models, or to delegation that is re-authorized at every hop by a single central policy decision point (PDP).",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/which-invariants-prevent-silent-capability-escalation-when-two-federated-agent-meshes-negotiate-delegated-authority-across-organizational-policy-bound.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/which-invariants-prevent-silent-capability-escalation-when-two-federated-agent-meshes-negotiate-delegated-authority-across-organizational-policy-bound.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/which-invariants-prevent-silent-capability-escalation-when-two-federated-agent-meshes-negotiate-delegated-authority-across-organizational-policy-bound.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1576,
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The distinction that matters is between **capability attenuation** and **capability intersection**. Most federation designs assume these are the same operation: when domain A delegates `{read, write, delete}` to domain B and B's policy permits `{read, write}`, the naive result is `{read, write}` — an intersection, and intuitively safe because the result is a...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a federation between a data-processing org (call it the delegator, D) and an analytics org (the delegate, G), D negotiated a delegation of `dataset.transform` to G for a batch pipeline. G's policy engine resolved `dataset.transform` against its own resource hierarchy and returned a grant that included a transitive `dataset.export` — because in G's model, `transform` on a dataset implies read-access to derived ...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The invariant holds only when three conditions are jointly satisfied, and each is independently easy to break: 1. **Vocabulary closure at negotiation time.** The delegator must be able to enumerate the full transitive closure of capabilities the delegate might emit, including \"enabling\" privileges the delegate attaches to satisfy its own internal consistency...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational question is: *when is a negotiated grant safe to commit without a full dry-run resolution?* The boundary is the presence of a **synthesis-capable policy engine** on either side. If both domains use pure attribute-based evaluation with no capability derivation rules (no implications, no enabling-privilege folding, no transitive grants), then n...",
    "operational_effect": "Teams that adopt the resolution-and-diff pass observe a one-time burst of rejected negotiations during rollout, almost all of them legitimate-but-undeclared enabling privileges. The correct response is to require delegates to publish a synthesis manifest, not to relax the check. Teams that skip the pass and rely on per-hop audit observe zero rejections and n..."
  },
  "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": "a2faa93ef92a97c70bcc5ee68f6e2ec65b531dc78bea0a5c1b4d4a69b0d8cad6",
    "verified_classes": [
      "FederationEscalationError",
      "Grant",
      "NegotiationContext"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "commit_negotiated_grant"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "FederationEscalationError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}