GoodShyt Group Inc.

San Francisco CA United States of America deonte@goodshyt.fun https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8586-3650

Security This document defines architectural non-collapse requirements for agent systems that consume evidence, provenance, model outputs, or other machine-readable claims before consequential actions. It requires implementations to keep integrity, provenance, evidence qualification, authorization, and execution as distinct states; to represent unresolved required evidence explicitly; and to preserve issued evaluation records append-only. The document defines no new transport protocol and no IANA registrations.

IntroductionAgent systems increasingly combine identity, delegation, evidence, memory, policy, and execution. A recurring failure mode is semantic collapse: a property established in one layer is treated as though it were established in another. Examples include treating a signed object as true, a supported premise as authorized action, or an authorization as proof of successful execution.

Requirements Language 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 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

Normative Non-Collapse Requirements An implementation conforming to this architecture MUST distinguish at least the following states: artifact integrity, provenance, evidence qualification, authorization decision, and execution outcome. Integrity MUST NOT be interpreted as proposition validity. Provenance MUST NOT be interpreted as truth. Evidence qualification MUST NOT be interpreted as authorization. Authorization MUST NOT be interpreted as execution. Where a policy requires qualified evidence, missing, stale, unresolved, or type-incompatible required evidence MUST NOT be silently treated as satisfied.

Three-Valued Evidence StateEvidence evaluation SHOULD preserve PASS, FAIL, and INDETERMINATE as distinct states. FAIL indicates a required condition is contradicted or violated. INDETERMINATE indicates that no required condition has established FAIL but one or more required inputs or bridges are missing or unresolved. A policy requiring PASS MUST NOT accept INDETERMINATE.

Append-Only LifecycleIssued evaluation records SHOULD be immutable. New evidence SHOULD create a successor record that can identify its predecessor. A successor MUST NOT be interpreted as erasing the historical state under which an earlier decision was made.

Typed Promotion BoundariesCrossing from observation to evidence, evidence to warranted premise, premise to authorization, and authorization to execution requires explicit interfaces or witnesses. Implementations SHOULD make these promotion rules inspectable and testable.

Relationship to Evidence Qualification ReceiptsAn Evidence Qualification Receipt can implement the evidence-qualification layer described here. A PASS receipt remains an authorization input only; local policy retains authority over action.

Security ConsiderationsSemantic collapse can enable authority laundering, replay of stale evidence, profile substitution, confused-deputy execution, and false completion records. Implementations should bind evidence states to exact propositions, profiles, contexts, and actions when consequence warrants it.

Privacy ConsiderationsEvidence graphs can expose sensitive information. Systems should minimize plaintext evidence in authorization paths and prefer scoped digests or privacy-preserving references when sufficient.

IANA ConsiderationsThis document has no IANA actions.

Normative References

Changes since -00 Editorial and tooling-conformance changes only; no technical content was changed.

• Added BCP 14 Requirements Language section (document uses uppercase requirement keywords without the boilerplate; idnits error)
• Added RFC 2119 reference entry
• Added RFC 8174 reference entry
• Normalized author metadata (full name with ASCII form, initials, organization GoodShyt Group Inc., San Francisco CA postal, email, ORCID URI)
• Updated document date and revision number.