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A Policy Grammar for Inter-Domain Agent Routing
draft-ahuja-agent-routing-policy-00

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draft-ahuja-agent-routing-policy-00
Individual Submission                                        S. P. Ahuja
Internet-Draft                                                 Main Labs
Intended status: Informational                         17 September 2026
Expires: 21 March 2027

            A Policy Grammar for Inter-Domain Agent Routing
                  draft-ahuja-agent-routing-policy-00

Abstract

   Agent tasks are delegated across organizational boundaries.  Existing
   work specifies how agents are identified, discovered, and described,
   states requirements for cross-domain isolation and authorization, and
   identifies the absence of a mechanism for expressing capability
   policy as a gap.  This document defines four policy attributes for
   inter-domain agent delegation, the declarations each attribute
   carries, and a validity condition on delegation chains that no party
   establishes by observing the whole chain.  Whether independently
   chosen policies converge is analysed in separate work.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 21 March 2027.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components

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   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Relationship to Existing Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Scope Comparison Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Policy Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     5.1.  Graduated Self-Deprioritization . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.2.  Non-Binding Preference Signalling . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.3.  Opaque Policy Tags  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     5.4.  Chain Validity Attribute  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Profile Identity  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Attribute Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Transitivity Conformance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  Chain Validity Condition  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. Requirements and Gaps Addressed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   13. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     13.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     13.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14

1.  Introduction

   A delegation crosses an organizational boundary when the party
   receiving a task is operated by someone other than the party sending
   it.  The sender then has no view of what the task encounters
   downstream, and the receiver is acting under policy the sender cannot
   inspect.

   [INTENTREQ] requires that a coordination substrate let an
   organization isolate its capability namespace, and that
   interoperation across organizational boundaries be explicitly
   authorized and policy-controlled (REQ-13).  [GWGAP] Section 7.2
   states the same absence as a gap: capability descriptions say what an
   agent can do and do not say who may discover or invoke it under what
   conditions, and there is no standard mechanism for expressing,
   distributing, and enforcing those constraints.  This document
   specifies a mechanism for the expression half of that gap.

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   The test applied throughout is whether a behaviour must be specified
   to survive crossing a boundary, or whether a domain may decide it
   alone.  An attribute a domain can implement internally, with no
   counterparty obliged to read it, does not belong in a protocol.  Each
   attribute in Section 5 is here because it fails that way.

   Domains exist for administrative reasons.  Data residency law,
   sovereign compute programmes, sunk regional infrastructure, and
   organizations that will not route work through a competitor's systems
   all produce boundaries that no improvement in agent capability
   removes.  This document takes no position on whether specialised or
   general agents prevail.

2.  Conventions and Definitions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   Domain:  A jurisdiction of policy ownership.  A domain owns policy
      over the agents it operates and over the delegations it accepts
      and emits.  The term carries no claim about knowledge, capability,
      or subject-matter expertise.  Two domains may operate identical
      agents and hold opposite policies.

   Delegation:  The transfer of a task from one agent to another.

   Delegation chain:  The ordered sequence of delegations by which a
      task reaches its current holder.  A chain of length zero is a task
      that has not been delegated.

   Hop:  A single delegation, together with the domains on either side
      of it.

   Governing profile:  The immutable definition, agreed between the
      parties to a hop, under which attribute values are compared.
      Profile identity is subject to Section 6.  A profile is not
      global; two hops in one chain may name different profiles, with
      the consequence stated in Section 9.

   Attenuation relation:  The relation a profile defines between two
      values of an attribute, under which one value is no broader than
      another.

   Relying party:  A party evaluating a hop or a chain in order to
      accept, forward, or refuse a task.

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3.  Relationship to Existing Work

   Agent identity, discovery, and capability advertisement are specified
   elsewhere and are not restated here.  This document assumes an agent
   can be named, located, and described.

   [INTENTREQ] and [GWGAP] are the documents this mechanism answers.
   Section 10 states which requirements and gaps each part of the
   grammar addresses and which constrain it.

   [BCR] supplies the scope-comparison vocabulary and the chain-
   composition rules this document uses.  They are adopted, not
   extended; see Section 4.  [BINDING] states the same non-elevation
   property for composed verifier results generally, and is cited where
   this document relies on it.

   Authorization frameworks answer whether a party may act.  An
   authorization decision does not identify who holds a task after the
   permitting credential expired, and it does not identify who is
   accountable for a task two delegations downstream of the party that
   was authorized.  Policy over delegation is not a generalised form of
   authorization and does not subsume it.

   Whether a claimed transition can later be established by a party that
   did not participate in it is treated in [DET], and the evidentiary
   weight of records asserting order is treated in [DECREC].  This
   document produces no evidence artifacts and makes no ordering or
   retrospective-determinability claims.

4.  Scope Comparison Vocabulary

   This document does not define a comparison vocabulary.  It uses the
   one published in [BCR] Section 7, and implementers are expected to
   read that section.  A relying party MAY use a scope verifier
   conforming to [BCR] to evaluate the attribute defined in Section 5.4.
   The summary below identifies only what this document relies on.

   Membership and attenuation are separate decisions.  Membership
   returns IN_SCOPE, OUT_OF_SCOPE, or UNDECIDED.  Attenuation returns
   NO_BROADER, BROADER, or UNDECIDED.  This document is concerned with
   attenuation.  Where an attribute has mandatory components, the
   composite rules of [BCR] Section 7 apply unchanged: any BROADER
   component makes the composite broader, otherwise any UNDECIDED
   component makes the composite UNDECIDED, each component result
   remains visible, and a missing component is not a successful
   comparison.

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   An UNDECIDED attenuation result states why.  Two reasons defined in
   [BCR] are relied on here, and they are relied on because a relying
   party does different things with them.

   NO_COMPARISON_RELATION:  The verifier holds the exact governing
      profile and that profile supplies no applicable relation for the
      component and values reported.  This is absence of a relation
      under that profile and is not a claim that comparison is globally
      impossible.  No party holding different inputs changes it, so the
      relying party halts.

   PROFILE_NOT_HELD:  The exact governing profile definition is
      unavailable to the deciding verifier.  Its absence does not
      establish that the profile defines no relation.  Retrieval of the
      exact definition, or re-evaluation by a verifier accepted under
      relying-party policy, may remedy it, so the relying party MAY
      route the evaluation.

   These two do not exhaust the causes of UNDECIDED, and another cause
   MUST NOT be reported as either of them.  Until a required current
   comparison succeeds, the relying party refuses.

   LOCAL_ONLY is a composition status carried on a decided attenuation
   result, separate from that result.  It is not a third attenuation
   value and not a substitute for UNDECIDED.  A negative local result
   stays negative whatever its composition status.

   UNDECIDED describes an unavailable comparison.  It is not the
   execution outcome INDETERMINATE, and the two MUST NOT be reported
   interchangeably.

5.  Policy Attributes

   Each attribute is stated in the same form: what the advertising
   domain asserts, what a receiving domain is obliged to do, what it is
   not obliged to do, and what the attribute does not establish.

   An attribute value carried on a delegation MUST be accompanied by the
   declarations in Section 7.

   Attribute values are compared by matching declared identifiers under
   the governing profile.  Evaluating an attribute MUST NOT require any
   party to interpret the semantics of the task, consistent with REQ-10
   and REQ-11 of [INTENTREQ].

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5.1.  Graduated Self-Deprioritization

   A domain advertises a graduated reduction in its willingness to
   receive delegations, without becoming unreachable.

   The advertising domain asserts that delegations to the named agents
   remain acceptable and that it prefers they be sent elsewhere where an
   alternative exists.

   A receiving domain MUST treat the advertisement as ordered against
   other advertisements from the same domain under the governing
   profile.  It MUST NOT treat the advertisement as a refusal, and MUST
   NOT require the advertising domain to justify the value.

   This attribute does not establish capacity, health, or load.  A
   domain may deprioritize itself for contractual reasons unrelated to
   its state.  A relying party that reads load from this attribute is
   reading something the attribute does not carry.

5.2.  Non-Binding Preference Signalling

   A domain advertises a preference among its own endpoints to a
   counterparty that will make the selection.

   The advertising domain asserts a ranking over agents it operates.
   The counterparty MAY use the ranking and MAY disregard it.  A domain
   MUST NOT treat its own preference as having bound the counterparty's
   choice, and MUST NOT refuse a delegation solely because the
   counterparty selected a lower-ranked endpoint.

   REQ-7 of [INTENTREQ] requires that any selection depending on real-
   time state be made by the entity holding that state.  This attribute
   is conformant because it is not a selection.  The advertising domain
   states a preference derived from what it knows about its own
   endpoints; the decision remains with the party holding the requesting
   context.  A binding form would place the decision with a party that
   cannot see the inputs it needs, which is the failure REQ-7 excludes.

   REQ-8 of [INTENTREQ] defines a mode in which the infrastructure
   returns multiple matching handlers and the requester chooses.  That
   mode exists for endpoint reachability rather than for preference, and
   this document does not claim otherwise.  The attribute is usable
   within it.

   This attribute does not establish that the ranked endpoints are
   interchangeable, and establishes nothing about endpoints operated by
   other domains.

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5.3.  Opaque Policy Tags

   A domain attaches a tag whose meaning is agreed bilaterally with the
   receiving domain and is not defined by this document.

   The advertising domain asserts that the tag is drawn from the
   vocabulary agreed with the receiver.  A receiving domain that holds
   the agreement MUST apply the agreed handling.  A receiving domain
   that does not hold the agreement MUST forward the tag unaltered if it
   forwards the delegation at all, and MUST NOT infer meaning from an
   unrecognised tag.

   A tag's meaning is not available to parties outside the agreement,
   including parties on the same chain.  This is the property that makes
   tags usable for compliance, residency, and priority arrangements a
   domain will not publish, and it is the property that excludes them
   from Section 9.

   This attribute does not establish that any handling occurred.  A tag
   is a request under a bilateral agreement, not a receipt.

5.4.  Chain Validity Attribute

   A domain attaches a value stating the class of onward delegation it
   considers commercially coherent for this task.

   Values are drawn from an aggregable hierarchical namespace supporting
   prefix matching, as required by REQ-12 of [INTENTREQ].  That
   namespace is used as substrate and is not redefined here.  A profile
   MAY define containment as prefix containment over that namespace, in
   which case transitivity follows by construction and the basis is
   definition-derived under Section 8.

   A receiving domain MUST NOT emit an onward delegation whose value
   returns BROADER against the value it received.  A receiving domain
   MAY emit an onward delegation whose value returns NO_BROADER.

   This attribute does not establish that a chain is authorized, safe,
   or correct.  It establishes that each hop was no broader than its
   predecessor, and a chain-wide statement only where Section 8 and
   Section 9 permit one.

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6.  Profile Identity

   Every profile identifier used to govern a comparison MUST identify
   immutable comparison semantics.  An identifier fixed by immutable
   standards text satisfies this.  Any other profile identifier MUST be
   content-addressed.  A mutable alias or version label alone is
   insufficient.  This requirement is taken from [BCR] Section 7 and
   applies here unchanged, because a chain-wide statement made under a
   profile that can change afterwards is not a statement about anything.

   A relying party MUST pin the exact profile definition selected by an
   identifier and MUST refuse if that definition cannot be resolved
   unambiguously or has changed.

7.  Attribute Declaration

   An attribute is either chain-checkable or bilateral.  A chain-
   checkable attribute has values compared under a governing profile and
   is the subject of Section 9.  A bilateral attribute has meaning
   available only to the parties to an agreement, and Section 9 excludes
   it.

   Every attribute definition MUST declare which it is.  The declaration
   is a field of the definition.  A definition that states the property
   in prose without declaring it is not conformant, because a party
   evaluating a chain reads fields.

   Under this document the attributes in Section 5 are declared as
   follows: graduated self-deprioritization, bilateral; non-binding
   preference signalling, bilateral; opaque policy tags, bilateral;
   chain validity, chain-checkable.

   A profile defining an attenuation relation for a chain-checkable
   attribute MUST state whether that relation is reflexive and whether
   it is transitive, and MUST classify the basis of any transitivity
   claim as definition-derived, mechanically-checkable, or asserted, as
   specified in [BCR] Section 7.  The requirements on a mechanically-
   checkable claim, including the finite domain, the deterministic
   procedure, the establishment record, and the disclosure of reliance
   mode, are those of [BCR] and are not restated here.

   A profile that makes no transitivity claim is permitted.  Its results
   are governed by Section 8.

   A profile whose relation is not reflexive MUST state that an
   unchanged value will be refused.  A domain forwarding a task without
   narrowing it under such a profile is refused, and that consequence is
   a design choice the profile makes rather than an error.

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8.  Transitivity Conformance

   Section 9 draws a chain-wide statement from per-hop comparisons.  A
   party that verifies each hop concludes that the value at the end of
   the chain is no broader than the value at its start, without holding
   the chain entire.  This is what allows a chain-wide statement to be
   reached under REQ-4 and REQ-6 of [INTENTREQ]: no party holds state
   proportional to the chain, and each comparison is local.  The
   induction is sound only if the relation composes.

   A relying party MUST NOT promote per-hop comparisons into a chain-
   wide statement unless transitivity is definition-derived or
   mechanically established over the profile's complete declared finite
   domain, as [BCR] Section 7 requires.  A decided comparison under a
   non-transitive relation, an asserted-transitive relation, or a
   relation whose transitivity is not claimed is LOCAL_ONLY to its hop.
   It remains useful evidence about that hop and does not compose.

   [BINDING] Section 17 states the same property for composed verifier
   results generally: an aggregate result does not carry a claim
   stronger than its verified inputs, and a satisfied result does not
   survive composition when something it depends on is not established.
   Two independently developed documents arriving at this rule is the
   reason it is stated here as a constraint rather than as a
   recommendation.

   Relations defined by threshold, by rounding, or by table lookup over
   an incompletely declared domain are commonly not transitive.  A
   profile using such a relation is not thereby non-conformant.  Its
   results are hop-scoped, and LOCAL_ONLY is the conformant way to say
   so.

   Current practice does not close this.  [ATN] specifies delegation-
   chain verification as five steps, of which the second requires each
   link's scope to be a subset of its parent's.  That is pairwise
   checking.  The document states no transitivity property for the
   relation, classifies no basis for one, and defines no composition
   rule along the chain.  A relying party following those steps has
   verified every link and has no stated ground for a statement about
   the chain.  That gap is what the declaration in Section 7 closes, and
   [ATN] is cited here as the practice the requirement addresses rather
   than as a competing mechanism.

9.  Chain Validity Condition

   Let a chain consist of hops h(1) through h(n), each carrying a value
   of a chain-checkable attribute and each governed by a profile.

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   A chain of length zero is valid.  The holder has received no
   delegation and has narrowed nothing, so there is no hop at which
   containment could fail.

   A chain of length one requires a current NO_BROADER comparison at
   that hop.  It requires no transitive induction, and the transitivity
   basis of its profile does not affect the result.

   A chain of length greater than one is valid for an attribute when all
   of the following hold:

   1.  for every hop h(i), the comparison of the value emitted by h(i)
       against the value received by h(i) returns NO_BROADER under the
       profile governing h(i);

   2.  every adjacent comparison used for the chain-wide statement uses
       the same immutable profile definition, the same relation-rule
       definition, the same finite-domain identity where applicable, and
       the same transitivity basis; and

   3.  that transitivity basis is definition-derived or mechanically-
       checkable.

   Condition 2 is not a convenience.  Transitivity established
   separately for two different relations does not establish that those
   relations compose, and this document defines no cross-relation
   composition rule.  Where a chain changes any of those relation
   inputs, the decided comparisons on either side of that boundary
   remain LOCAL_ONLY across it, and no chain-wide statement is available
   even though every hop was decided and every profile claimed
   transitivity.  A relying party MUST report that outcome rather than
   treating two composable profiles as composing with each other.

   Bilateral attributes are excluded.  A relying party MUST NOT evaluate
   chain validity over a bilateral attribute, and MUST NOT infer from a
   valid chain that any bilateral attribute was honoured at any hop.

   Where a comparison at a hop returns UNDECIDED, the relying party
   proceeds according to the reason as described in Section 4.  Under
   NO_COMPARISON_RELATION the chain is not valid and the relying party
   halts.  Under PROFILE_NOT_HELD the chain is not valid to this relying
   party, which MAY route the evaluation to a party holding the exact
   definition.  A relying party MUST NOT treat a chain as valid by
   default in either case, and MUST NOT substitute LOCAL_ONLY for an
   unavailable comparison.

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   A failure to establish composition does not convert a decided hop
   result into UNDECIDED.  The hop result stands with its LOCAL_ONLY
   composition status, and the chain-wide statement is refused.

   A structural statement about a chain and a comparison result MUST NOT
   be combined into an overall validity claim unless both reports travel
   with the claim, including their decidability and composition limits.

10.  Requirements and Gaps Addressed

   This section states the relationship between this mechanism and the
   documents it answers.  It claims no conformance on behalf of any
   implementation.

   REQ-13 of [INTENTREQ] is the requirement this document answers.  The
   attributes in Section 5 are the means by which cross-boundary
   interoperation is policy-controlled, and Section 9 is the means by
   which that control survives onward delegation.

   [GWGAP] Section 7.2 names the absence of a standard mechanism for
   expressing, distributing, and enforcing capability visibility policy.
   This document addresses expression.  It does not address
   distribution, and it is not an enforcement point; see Section 11.

   [GWGAP] Section 7.4 identifies binding agent interactions to
   organizational identity and authorization context as that document's
   highest-priority candidate.  This document does not supply that
   binding.  A policy grammar is one component of it and is not a
   substitute for it.

   REQ-12 supplies the namespace on which the chain-checkable attribute
   is defined.

   REQ-7 and REQ-8 constrain the form of non-binding preference
   signalling.

   REQ-4 and REQ-6 are the reason Section 8 exists.  A chain-wide
   statement is drawn from local per-hop comparisons precisely so that
   no party holds chain-scale state.

   REQ-10 and REQ-11 constrain evaluation to declared identifiers, with
   no inference required of any evaluating party.

   REQ-14 requires bounded convergence.  This document specifies the
   attributes and the per-hop and chain semantics.  Whether domains
   setting these attributes independently, and according to their own
   interests, reach a stable global outcome is analysed in separate work
   and is out of scope here.

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11.  Security Considerations

   Opaque policy tags are a channel between domains holding a bilateral
   agreement.  The channel is intended and its capacity is bounded by
   the agreed vocabulary, but a vocabulary agreed for one purpose can
   carry information for another.  Domains that forward tags they do not
   understand, as Section 5 requires, are forwarding content they cannot
   inspect.

   Graduated self-deprioritization can be advertised falsely.  A domain
   that deprioritizes itself while remaining reachable may be shedding
   work it has accepted an obligation to perform, and a domain that
   never deprioritizes itself may be concealing saturation.  The
   attribute carries no evidence either way.

   A profile that classifies a transitivity basis as definition-derived
   for a relation that does not compose causes relying parties to draw
   chain-wide statements from per-hop comparisons that do not support
   them.  The resulting error is silent, which makes it more damaging
   than a profile that claims nothing.  A declared basis is a claim by
   the profile's author.  [BCR] Section 7 states the trust and freshness
   conditions under which a mechanical establishment record may be
   relied on, and those conditions apply here.

   A mutable profile identifier permits the semantics of a past
   comparison to be changed after the fact.  Section 6 exists for that
   reason.

   Section 9 places no bound on chain length.  A relying party
   evaluating a chain performs at least one comparison per hop, and a
   chain presented to it may be arbitrarily long.  A relying party
   SHOULD bound the number of hops it will evaluate, and MUST NOT treat
   exhaustion of that bound as a valid chain.  The bound is a local
   resource decision and is not a property of the chain, so two relying
   parties applying different bounds to the same chain may reach
   different results and neither is wrong.

   The default on an unresolved evaluation is to refuse.  A relying
   party that cannot evaluate a chain, for any reason in Section 4,
   Section 8, or Section 9, MUST NOT forward or accept the task on the
   basis of that evaluation.

   The isolation REQ-13 requires is not supplied by this document.
   These attributes express policy across a boundary that some other
   mechanism establishes, and a valid chain is not an access-control
   decision.  A deployment that treats attribute evaluation as
   enforcement has substituted a policy statement for an enforcement
   point.

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12.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests no IANA actions.  Attribute types are carried
   in profiles agreed between parties and are not registered at this
   revision.  Comparison results, reason codes, composition status, and
   transitivity basis values are those of [BCR] and are registered, if
   at all, by that document.  A future revision may request a registry
   for attribute types should the vocabulary stabilise.

13.  References

13.1.  Normative References

   [BCR]      Schrock, I., "Bounded Capability Receipts and Durable
              Spend Control for Agent Actions", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-schrock-ep-bounded-capability-
              receipts-06, 9 September 2026,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-schrock-ep-
              bounded-capability-receipts-06>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

13.2.  Informative References

   [ATN]      Somoza, E., "Agent Trust Negotiation: Capability,
              Delegation, and Provenance Binding for AI Agents", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-somoza-dmsc-atn-agent-
              trust-negotiation-00, 29 May 2026,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-somoza-dmsc-
              atn-agent-trust-negotiation-00>.

   [BINDING]  Bu, S., "Security Principal and Verifier Binding for Agent
              Communication Protocols", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-bu-agentproto-security-principal-binding-07,
              15 September 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/
              draft-bu-agentproto-security-principal-binding-07>.

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   [DECREC]   B, B., "Signed Decision Records for Agent Authorization:
              Disclosures, Entry Emission, and Ordering Evidence", Work
              in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-bradleyb-audit-
              decision-records-00, 13 August 2026,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-bradleyb-
              audit-decision-records-00>.

   [DET]      Wadkins, D., "Independent Determinability of Agent
              Actions", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-wadkins-
              agentproto-action-determinability-00, 10 September 2026,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-wadkins-
              agentproto-action-determinability-00>.

   [GWGAP]    Dunbar, L., Wang, Y., Schrock, I., and B. Liu, "Deployment
              Scenarios and Gap Analysis for AI Agent Gateway", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-dunbar-dmsc-gw-scenarios-
              gap-analysis-04, 14 August 2026,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dunbar-dmsc-
              gw-scenarios-gap-analysis-04>.

   [INTENTREQ]
              Feng, C., "Requirements for Intent Routing in Multi-Agent
              Systems at Internet Scale", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-feng-dmsc-intent-routing-requirements-00, 14
              August 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              feng-dmsc-intent-routing-requirements-00>.

Acknowledgements

   Iman Schrock authored the scope-comparison vocabulary and the chain-
   composition rules this document adopts.  Songbo Bu stated the non-
   elevation property for composed verifier results, which Section 8
   relies on.  Chong Feng stated the requirements this mechanism
   answers.  Linda Dunbar, YiFei Wang, Iman Schrock and Bing Liu
   identified the gap in policy expression that Section 10 maps to.
   Mirja Kuehlewind posed the test this document uses to select its
   attributes: what must be standardised to survive crossing a domain
   boundary, as distinct from what a domain may decide alone.  Douglas
   Wadkins and Henri Sirkkavaara sharpened, on the agentproto mailing
   list, the distinction between evidence of one transition and evidence
   of another, which is why this document states what its attributes do
   not establish.  Bradley B distinguished correspondence from
   precedence in records, cited here for the limit it places on what a
   chain report can claim.

Author's Address

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   Sumit P. Ahuja
   Main Labs
   United States of America
   Email: sumit@mainlabs.ai
   URI:   https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3487-5001

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