[Audit] Re: Charter Comments -- more specific on the scope?

[Iman Schrock <[e-mail]>]

Sumit,

Your distinction is right. EP-AEC pins one relying party’s decision-time
evidence requirement for one action. Your declaration is made by an
auditing task after the fact across the participants in a chain.

I would put six conformance cases into the -00:

   1. *Declaration integrity.* The audit function, not a participant,
   supplies a versioned, digested declaration covering the chain instance,
   participants, slots, accepted profiles, joins, sources and deadlines. Any
   weakening is rejected before evaluation.
   2. *All slots filled.* Each slot has an eligible, natively verified
   record bound to the exact chain or action, participant and role. Any
   declared format may fill it. No finding is emitted.
   3. *Bounded observed absence.* After the deadline, every declared source
   is completely searched under the declared query and cutoff, with no
   qualifying record found. The finding binds the declaration digest, slot,
   source set, query and as-of snapshot.
   4. *Incomplete observation.* An unavailable source, incomplete
   pagination or coverage, unresolved participant set, or open window produces
   an incomplete audit, never an absence finding.
   5. *Wrong or ineligible record.* A forged, untrusted, stale, or
   wrong-action, wrong-participant or wrong-slot candidate cannot fill the
   slot. The result reports the actual reason, not “no record.”
   6. *Late record.* A record discovered later produces a new as-of result.
   It does not rewrite the earlier finding.

The important boundary is that this is not “proof of absence” or proof of a
complete chain. The precise claim is only that no qualifying record was
found in the declared sources by the cutoff.

I would call the mechanism a *participant-spanning expected-record audit*.
I would also say “records emitted under an AEB deployment,” not “AEB record
format,” because AEB deliberately does not define a universal format.

This gives the -00 a testable absence rule while leaving the
consequence-boundary semantics in AEB and the one-action evidence bar in
EP-AEC.

Best,
Iman


On Mon, 05 Oct 2026 20:14:18 -0400, Sumit Ahuja <[e-mail]> wrote:

Iman, Yes, that division works, and it keeps the -00 small. The draft will
sit across the chain and leave the boundary semantics where they already
live. I'll cite AEB as an existing boundary contract and not build a
parallel consequence model. One addition from reading AEB's references.
EP-AEC's relying-party-pinned evidence requirement is close to an
expected-record declaration, so the -00 will cite it too and say how the
two differ. EP-AEC pins what one relying party needs at decision time, for
one action. The declaration here is made by an auditing task after the
fact, across every participant in the chain, and it is what turns an absent
record into a finding. The draft will stay neutral to record format, so AEB
records, receipts like Vaara's, AER-1 entries or vCon can each fill a
declared slot. That matches what Mirja asked for. I'd welcome your
conformance cases. Having them before the first version would make the
absence rule testable from the start. Sumit On Mon, Oct 05, 2026 01:25 PM,
Iman Schrock <[e-mail]> wrote: > Sumit, > > The
expected-record declaration is useful, and I think there is a > clean way
to keep the -00 from duplicating work that is already > published. > >
AEB-07 already defines the executor-side contract at a consequential >
boundary: the observed material action, native artifact verification, >
exact-action correspondence, the pinned evaluation record and declared >
coverage, the authorization decision, durable consumption or > reservation,
provider entry, closed outcomes, and authenticated > reconciliation. It
also defines the limits of what that boundary > establishes and
deliberately does not create a universal record > format. > >
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-schrock-action-evidence-boundary/ >
> The cross-domain work can sit one layer above that contract: declare >
which AEB or other native records each participant is expected to >
produce, what each record establishes, and when absence becomes a >
finding. That extends the existing work across the chain without >
reopening the consequence-boundary semantics. I would not create a >
parallel consequence-boundary model. > > Could we use that as the division
for the -00 and cite AEB as the > existing boundary contract? I’d be glad
to work on that text and the > related conformance cases with you before
the first version. > > Best, > Iman