Web4 Delegated Authority

Conventions and TerminologyThe 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 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

IntroductionThis document defines a public mandate object for bounded and revocable authority delegated to an agent or node without exposing private reasoning or model state.

Mandate ModelA mandate MUST identify the mandate, grantor, grantee, permitted actions, prohibited actions where applicable, resource scope, policy, validity period, delegation rules, status mechanism, and proof.{ "mandate_id": "urn:web4:mandate:01JEXAMPLE", "grantor_id": "did:example:principal-1", "grantee_id": "did:example:agent-7", "permitted_actions": ["submit_assessment"], "prohibited_actions": ["change_policy"], "policy_id": "urn:web4:policy:delegation:v1", "maximum_delegation_depth": 0, "status_uri": "https://status.example/mandates/01JEXAMPLE", "proof": { "type": "ExampleProof", "verification_method": "did:example:principal-1#key-1", "value": "BASE64URL-SIGNATURE" } }

Grant and AcceptanceThe grantor MUST have authority to issue the mandate. Acceptance MUST NOT expand granted authority.

DelegationA delegated mandate MUST identify its parent and MUST never expand action scope, resource scope, validity, or delegation depth.

Action LinkageEach governed action MUST identify the mandate relied upon, actor, action type, target, performance time, and resulting receipt.

Human ControlA policy MAY require human approval for named actions. The requirement and outcome MUST be externally identifiable without exposing private deliberation.

Suspension and RevocationA mandate MUST provide a resolvable status and authorized revocation path. Revocation MUST prevent new authorization while preserving historical receipts.

ConformanceConformance MUST NOT require disclosure of chain-of-thought, planning logic, policy optimization, model weights, or private model state.

Relationship to Research ArtifactsBroader Web4 architectural work is described informatively in . 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.

Security ConsiderationsImplementations 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.Implementations MUST prevent privilege escalation, delegation-depth bypass, mandate replay, confused-deputy behavior, and post-revocation authorization.

Privacy ConsiderationsPersistent 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.

IANA ConsiderationsThis document requests no IANA actions.