{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "why-does-an-instance-fail-to-anchor-a-did-attestation-when-its-aaif-issuance-clock-is-skewed-relative-to-the-resolver-s-validity-window",
  "title": "Why does an instance fail to anchor a DID attestation when its AAIF issuance clock is skewed relative to the resolver's validity window",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 10",
  "scope": "Applies to cross-organization agent trust bootstrapping where an agent presents a Decentralized Identifier (DID) anchored to an Agent Attestation Issuance Framework (AAIF) credential and a remote peer validates it against a DID resolver plus attestation verifier. Does not apply to intra-org trust where the verifier shares the issuer's clock authority, nor to long-lived cached attestations already pinned by a prior successful bootstrap.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/why-does-an-instance-fail-to-anchor-a-did-attestation-when-its-aaif-issuance-clock-is-skewed-relative-to-the-resolver-s-validity-window.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/why-does-an-instance-fail-to-anchor-a-did-attestation-when-its-aaif-issuance-clock-is-skewed-relative-to-the-resolver-s-validity-window.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/why-does-an-instance-fail-to-anchor-a-did-attestation-when-its-aaif-issuance-clock-is-skewed-relative-to-the-resolver-s-validity-window.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1485,
    "python_slice_tokens": 298,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure is not signature failure, key rotation failure, or revocation. It is a *temporal anchoring* failure: the attestation is cryptographically valid and unrevoked, yet the verifier rejects it because the AAIF `iat`/`exp` window, as issued by the presenting agent's local clock, does not intersect the resolver's acceptable validity window at the moment ...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a cold-start federation between Org A (agent issuer, AAIF issuer node `aaif-a1`) and Org B (relying party, resolver `did-b2`), roughly 3–7% of first-contact bootstraps failed with `attestation_not_yet_valid` even though the AAIF credential carried a correct Ed25519 signature over the DID document hash and the DID resolved to the expected key. Root cause traced to skew, not corruption. The presenting agent's ho...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The boundary is real and the rejection is *correct* under these conditions, and the verifier must not be \"fixed\" to accept it: 1. The AAIF issuer and the relying party do not share a trusted time source (no common NTS/NTP pool, no signed timestamp authority). 2. The credential's validity window is narrower than the maximum plausible inter-org clock skew (her...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational decision is whether to (a) widen verifier skew tolerance, (b) require AAIF issuers to co-sign with a timestamp authority, or (c) have the presenting agent re-mint on `not_yet_valid`. The correct boundary: - **Widen tolerance only up to the verifier's measured NTP error bound.** Beyond that, you have converted a temporal check into a no-op and...",
    "operational_effect": "When the boundary is respected, first-contact bootstrap failure rate drops to the true cryptographic failure rate (<0.1%) and the residual `not_yet_valid` events become a *diagnostic*: each one is evidence of issuer clock skew that should be surfaced to the AAIF issuer's health metric, not retried into oblivion. When it is ignored — tolerance widened to 5 mi..."
  },
  "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": "20bbafcae0af919f4ea7ee625962408d72ffdcd07944f65deb06714c3471fdef",
    "verified_classes": [
      "AttestationTemporalError",
      "AAIFAttestation"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "verify_temporal_anchor",
      "bootstrap_cross_org"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 5,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "AttestationTemporalError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}