Internet Engineering Task Force T. Jacobs Internet-Draft KTS Global Intended status: Experimental 12 September 2026 Expires: 16 March 2027 Web4 Assessment Assertions draft-jacobs-web4-assessment-assertions-00 Abstract This document defines an implementation-neutral envelope for externally presented assessment results, including subject, issuer, policy, result, validity, evidence commitments, proof, and current status, while protected methods remain confidential. 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 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on 16 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 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. Jacobs Expires 16 March 2027 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Web4 Assessment Assertions September 2026 Table of Contents 1. Conventions and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. Scope and Non-Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 4. Assessment Assertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5. Evaluator Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6. Verifier Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7. Status Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 8. Conformance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 9. Relationship to Research Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 11. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 13. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 14. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. Conventions and Terminology 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. 2. Introduction This document defines an implementation-neutral envelope for an externally presented assessment result. It standardizes the verification surface, not the method used to calculate the result. A Conforming Evaluator MAY use a public, proprietary, confidential, automated, human-mediated, cryptographic, mathematical, geometric, statistical, or machine-learning method. KCoordinate and KQAS are possible implementations but are neither required nor specified here. 3. Scope and Non-Goals This document defines assertion syntax, issuer accountability, policy context, temporal validity, evidence commitments, proof carriage, and status resolution. It does not define coordinate spaces, transforms, metrics, mappings, derivations, score equations, weights, thresholds, calibration, features, training inputs, or private evidence. Jacobs Expires 16 March 2027 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Web4 Assessment Assertions September 2026 4. Assessment Assertion An Assessment Assertion MUST identify the assertion, subject, accountable issuer, applicable policy or profile, outcome, issuance time, temporal validity, proof mechanism, and current-status mechanism. A profile MAY require an assurance-class reference and evidence commitments. { "assertion_id": "urn:web4:assertion:01JEXAMPLE", "assertion_type": "assessment", "subject_id": "did:example:node-842", "issuer_id": "did:example:evaluator-1", "policy_id": "urn:web4:policy:admission:v1", "outcome": "conformant", "issued_at": "2026-09-12T13:59:00Z", "valid_until": "2026-12-12T13:59:00Z", "status_uri": "https://status.example/assertions/01JEXAMPLE", "proof": { "type": "ExampleProof", "verification_method": "did:example:evaluator-1#key-1", "value": "BASE64URL-SIGNATURE" } } 5. Evaluator Requirements A Conforming Evaluator MUST expose sufficient information to verify issuer, subject, policy context, temporal validity, integrity protection, and current status. It MUST retain records required by policy and support correction, supersession, suspension, expiration, or revocation where applicable. Conformance MUST NOT require disclosure of protected inputs, coordinate representations, model parameters, inference processes, private evidence, calibration material, scoring functions, or trade- secret methods. 6. Verifier Requirements A Verifier MUST validate issuer authority, subject binding, policy identity and version, temporal validity, proof integrity, and current status before treating an assertion as active. Unresolved status MUST be treated as indeterminate. Jacobs Expires 16 March 2027 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Web4 Assessment Assertions September 2026 7. Status Model The base status vocabulary is active, suspended, superseded, revoked, expired, and indeterminate. 8. Conformance Conformance does not establish that an assessment conclusion is true or that its subject is secure, lawful, or suitable for a particular purpose. 9. Relationship to Research Artifacts Broader Web4 architectural work is described informatively in [I-D.reilly-web4]. Informative research materials MAY be published as versioned scholarly artifacts, including DOI-addressable records. A research artifact is not required for conformance unless expressly incorporated as a Normative Reference by a named profile. Referencing or verifying an artifact does not establish the truth of its conclusions, regulatory approval, certification, security, legal compliance, or IETF endorsement. A Conforming Implementation MUST NOT require access to KCoordinate, KQAS, or another protected internal assessment method unless a separate deployment agreement selects that implementation. 10. Security Considerations Implementations MUST authenticate issuers, validate proof integrity, check proof purpose, enforce temporal validity, and resolve current status before relying on an object. Implementations MUST address identifier confusion, issuer impersonation, key compromise, algorithm downgrade, replay, stale status, unauthorized supersession, cross-policy confusion, canonicalization ambiguity, denial of service, and fail-open handling of indeterminate validity. Evidence commitments can confirm correspondence with committed bytes but do not prove truth, completeness, legality, provenance, or fitness for purpose. Profiles SHOULD define privacy-preserving commitment procedures for low-entropy artifacts. Jacobs Expires 16 March 2027 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Web4 Assessment Assertions September 2026 11. Privacy Considerations Persistent identifiers, status queries, proofs, policy references, and linked receipts can enable correlation. Implementations MUST minimize disclosed data and SHOULD use unlinkable or pairwise identifiers where they satisfy policy. Private evidence MAY remain undisclosed and be represented by a cryptographic commitment. Retention and erasure requirements MUST be specified by policy and account for applicable obligations. 12. IANA Considerations This document requests no IANA actions. 13. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, . 14. Informative References [I-D.reilly-web4] Reilly, L. J., "Web4: A Verifiable, Agent-Native Architecture for the World Wide Web", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-reilly-web4-00, 26 August 2026, . Author's Address Tim Jacobs KTS Global United Arab Emirates Email: tim@ktsglobal.live Jacobs Expires 16 March 2027 [Page 5]