[SCITT] Re: New I-D — binding delegation authorization and provenance into SCITT Agent Action Capsules

[Steven Mih <[e-mail]>]

Karthik,
This is a clean piece of work, thank you. Binding the authorization
decision and its provenance references through namespaced payload
extensions, with the capsule's core fields untouched, is exactly the
extension pattern the profile is meant to support: the capsule records
that an action was taken under a stated authorization and anchors it,
without asserting the authority itself. Sitting it on the "did" leg is
the right call.

The line I'd underscore, because it's the whole point: the
authorization can come from any delegation mechanism. The capsule is
deliberately agnostic there — it carries an opaque reference to
whatever granted the "may" and lets the transparency log make the
record checkable, so no single delegation scheme has to win for the
record to be verifiable. Your binding makes that concrete.

On your open question — where the audit/provenance leg should sit
relative to the capsule core and the AEP composition: I'd keep
provenance composed by reference (a digest binding to the provenance
evidence) rather than folded into the core, for the same reason
authorization stays a reference — it keeps the legs separable and lets
a verifier check each independently. That is the structure the
composition draft (draft-mih-sato-agent-accountability-composition-00)
is meant to make legible: CAN / WHO / WHAT / AUDIT as
independently-verifiable profiles binding by a shared action digest,
with none a required root of trust for another. Your draft slots in as
the binding between the authorization and provenance legs and the
record.

This slots straight into the interop we're already lining up for the
126 hackathon. A capsule carrying your namespaced bindings,
cross-verified against the open verifier. Looking forward to put that
result on the table.

Best,
Steven

On Mon, Jul 06, 2026 02:53 PM, KARTHIK RAMPALLI
<[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have posted an individual Internet-Draft that composes with the Agent Action Capsule work: draft-rampalli-scitt-capsule-provenance-binding-00, "Binding Delegation Authorization and Provenance References into SCITT Agent Action Capsules."
>
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rampalli-scitt-capsule-provenance-binding/
>
> What it does.
> It defines how a per-action authorization decision and its provenance references are bound into a SCITT Agent Action Capsule, through namespaced payload extensions that leave the capsule's core fields untouched. In the capsule's may / did / why-believed model it sits on the did leg: it does not assert authority, it records that an action was taken under a stated authorization, so that record is verifiable through the transparency log rather than on the recorder's word.
>
> How it composes.
> The authorization can come from any delegation mechanism; the capsule supplies the transparency-anchored record; and the provenance leg lines up with the AEP composition work (draft-sokolov-rats-aep-composition). The three are separable, and this draft specifies only the binding between them.
>
> Status. Individual I-D, no working group standing. Review welcome, especially on the field bindings and on where the audit and provenance leg should sit relative to the capsule core and the AEP composition.
>
> Karthik Rampalli
> Glyphzero, Inc.
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