VERIMANDTHE AUTHORITY LAYER FOR AUTONOMOUS AIInspect VAGP

LEARN · AI AGENT AUTHORITY

AI Agent Authority: How It Relates to Identity and Authorization

AI agent authority is the evidence that an authenticated autonomous agent has a current organisational mandate for one exact action, resource and context.

VAGP v0.2 conceptsProof of Value evidence linked

CORE POSITIONING

Identity tells you who.
Authority proves why.

DEFINITION

Authority is current delegated mandate evidence.

In Verimand, an AI agent authority decision is not a general trust score. It is a deterministic answer about whether one authenticated agent has one complete qualifying authority path for the requested action and resource at the execution boundary.

The question is deliberately narrow: why may this agent perform this action on this resource now? VAGP keeps that question separate from model reasoning, human approval, IAM reachability and business policy.

Read the VAGP overview

RELATED CONTROLS

01Identity
Who is acting?

Cloud identity, workload identity, OAuth and similar controls can authenticate or represent a caller.

02Authorization
What can this credential do?

IAM, OAuth scopes and role assignments can grant technical permission to call systems and APIs.

03Policy
What rules apply?

Policy engines evaluate rules over trusted inputs and can add approval, risk and business controls.

04Authority
Why may this agent take this exact action now?

VAGP models the delegated organisational mandate, exact path, current status and execution-time evidence.

DEV VS PROD

The same identity can still lack authority.

A cloud operations agent may authenticate successfully and the gateway may hold technical permission. If the mandate covers only development resources, a production request returns NO_AUTHORITY and no provider call should execute.

Inspect the multicloud PoV evidence
IDENTITYsame authenticated agent
DEVAUTHORITY_CONFIRMED -> VERIFIED
PRODNO_AUTHORITY -> BLOCKED
EVIDENCEprovider outcome recorded separately

VAGP CONCEPTS

01Non-amplifying delegation

Child authority may preserve or restrict the parent mandate. It cannot add scope, loosen freshness or remove required authority dimensions.

02No path pooling

VAGP selects one complete qualifying authority path. Two incomplete paths cannot be combined into an authority neither path contains.

03Finite authority

Bounded capacity and bounded freshness remain attached to the selected path. Delegation cannot duplicate finite authority across descendants.

04Revocation freshness

Issuers declare finite status freshness. v0.2 does not claim instantaneous global revocation.

05Execution-time verification

VERIFY compares the bound request identity, action, resource, parameters and trusted context before consequential provider submission.

06Authority Witness

Witness evidence explains why authority existed or failed. It never confers authority and is not a portable grant or receipt.

Open the versioned VAGP v0.2 reference

WHAT VERIMAND HAS DEMONSTRATED

One authority model across two cloud identity ecosystems.

The public PoV evidence records six bounded cases across Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. It separates authority outcome, VERIFY result, provider invocation and observed resource state.

CloudCasesIdentityOperationLimit
Google CloudA, B and CGoogle Agent Identity mapped to the CloudOps agent.cloud.secret.version.disableBounded live PoV. Secret values, raw traces and provider identifiers are withheld.
Microsoft AzureA, B and CEntra Agent Identity mapped to the CloudOps agent.cloud.vm.stopBounded live PoV. Raw object IDs, traces and tenant details are withheld.

CONFORMANCE AND LIMITS

AreaInvariantsSourceTestsLimit
Request cardinalityV02-I03, V02-I05ADR-029vagp-0.2-one-grant-per-decision, bound-authority-decision, freeze-candidate E2EProcess-local registry scope only.
Revocation and freshnessV02-I06, V02-I07, V02-I21ADR-030vagp-0.2-revocation-latency, dynamic-revocation-and-freshnessFinite freshness, not instantaneous revocation.
Financial applicabilityV02-I08, V02-I12ADR-031vagp-0.2-financial-applicabilityIssuer declarations and trusted context decide applicability.
Trusted context continuityV02-I09, V02-I10, V02-I18ADR-032 and ADR-034vagp-0.2-execution-time-trusted-context, vagp-0.2-trusted-input-versioningTrusted adapters remain deployment responsibilities.
Witness evidenceV02-I13, V02-I17ADR-033vagp-0.2-authority-witnessWitnesses are not grants, credentials or cryptographic receipts.
Provider submissionV02-I22VAGP-0.2.md and PoV regression suitesgcp-agentic-pov, azure-agentic-pov, freeze-candidate E2EVERIFY does not imply provider success or provider atomicity.

Current limits remain part of the claim.

VAGP v0.2 is a frozen single-instance baseline. Current Execution Grants are unsigned, process-local and non-portable. The public pages do not claim durable restart continuity, distributed authority state, provider atomicity, cryptographic witness authenticity, signed receipts, production readiness or vendor endorsement.

FAQ

Is AI agent authority the same as authentication?

No. Authentication establishes the caller. Authority explains the organisational mandate for one exact action and resource.

Does this mean IAM or OAuth cannot authorize agents?

No. IAM, OAuth and policy systems remain useful authorization controls. VAGP adds a separate authority evidence layer that can gate how technical permission is used.

Can delegated authority expand as it moves through agents?

No in VAGP v0.2. Delegation may preserve or restrict authority; it may not broaden the parent mandate.

Can two partial paths be pooled into one answer?

No. VAGP evaluates complete authority paths independently. It does not assemble unrelated permissions into a synthetic mandate.

Does an Authority Witness authorize execution?

No. A Witness explains why authority existed or failed. It is not a grant, credential, bearer capability or receipt.

Is Verimand ready for production use?

The current public claim is narrower: frozen v0.2 semantics and bounded live Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure Proofs of Value. Production-grade portable grants, durable state and public APIs remain planned or deferred.

NEXT STEPS

Start with the model.
Then inspect the evidence.

The overview explains the vocabulary. The versioned reference gives the frozen v0.2 anchors. The PoV page shows the public multicloud evidence. Product and research pages show the commercial direction and open questions.

VAGP overviewVAGP v0.2 referenceMulticloud PoV evidenceProduct directionResearch programme