Agent Authority

Glossary

Authority
The right or permission for an agent to act on behalf of a principal within a bounded scope.
Delegation
The transfer of bounded authority from a principal to an agent, ideally with issuer, subject, scope, expiry, and revocation semantics.
Scope
The limits of an authority grant: task, resource, budget, jurisdiction, time, risk tier, or counterparty.
Verifiable
A property of an authority claim that can be checked through signatures, credentials, registry entries, or other machine-readable proofs.
Accountable
A property of an action chain that lets auditors or systems identify who granted authority, who exercised it, and which policy governed it.
Revocation
The narrowing, expiration, suspension, or withdrawal of delegated authority.
Provenance
The evidence chain behind a claim, credential, policy, model, tool call, or agent action.