| Internet-Draft | Mission AuthZEN | August 2026 |
| McGuinness | Expires 11 February 2027 | [Page] |
Mission-Bound Runtime Enforcement defines a substrate-independent decision contract: before each consequential action runs, a Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) obtains a permit from a Policy Decision Point (PDP) that evaluates the action against the established Mission. This document is the concrete OpenID AuthZEN binding of that contract. It maps the contract's decision inputs onto the AuthZEN Authorization API request, shapes the permit and denial responses, defines the Decision Evidence, Execution Evidence, and Refusal Record objects a deployment emits and their integrity, binds every runtime failure condition to a wire-visible identifier, composes requestable denials with the AuthZEN Access Request and Approval Profile, and binds a Mission's approved authority to the capability source it was derived from, so a drifted capability definition is refused. It does not restate the enforcement semantics the runtime profile owns.¶
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.¶
The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-mission-authzen.html. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mcguinness-mission-authzen/.¶
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/mcguinness/mission-bound-authorization.¶
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.¶
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."¶
This Internet-Draft will expire on 11 February 2027.¶
Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶
Mission-Bound Runtime Enforcement [I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime] (the "runtime profile") specifies the runtime enforcement layer for Mission-bound access tokens issued under Mission-Bound Authorization for OAuth 2.0 [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission] (the "issuance profile"). The runtime profile is deliberately substrate-independent: it defines the decision contract, action classification, PEP placement, parameter binding and the time-of-check to time-of-use gap, the consumption-bound failure posture, failure modes, runtime enforcement evidence, and the runtime conformance scope, but it states that the decision API wire format is a deployment choice and defines no binding of its own.¶
This document is the OpenID AuthZEN binding of that contract: it maps the runtime profile's abstract decision contract onto the OpenID AuthZEN Authorization API [AUTHZEN] and carries only the AuthZEN-binding deltas:¶
how the runtime profile's materialized policy view is referenced on
the wire through its policy_view_id
(Section 4);¶
how the runtime profile's decision inputs map onto the AuthZEN
subject/resource/action/context envelope, the worked PDP
request, and the PDP-side consistency checks (Section 5);¶
batch evaluations over the AuthZEN evaluations endpoint (Section 5.15);¶
how the PDP's permit and denial responses are shaped, and the rules that keep a permit bound to the PEP, channel, and inputs it was issued for (Section 6);¶
the Decision Evidence, Execution Evidence, and Refusal Record objects, their integrity, and worked examples (Section 7, Section 8, Section 7.2);¶
the runtime denial classification and the complete mapping of the runtime profile's failure conditions onto wire-visible identifiers (Section 6.4, Section 6.6);¶
how requestable denials can compose with the AuthZEN Access Request and Approval Profile [ARAP];¶
the binding of a Mission's approved authority to concrete, catalog-sourced capabilities (Section 9).¶
The AuthZEN wire representation of cumulative consumption metering, including the settlement exchange and duration-lease renewal, is defined with the metering semantics themselves in the experimental metering companion ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-metering]).¶
This document does not restate the enforcement contract. It does not redefine which actions are consequential, where the PEP MUST sit, the semantics of parameter binding, the failure modes, or the runtime conformance scope; those are normatively defined in [I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime] and are referenced, not duplicated, here.¶
AuthZEN continues the Policy Decision Point / Policy Enforcement Point request-response vocabulary XACML established for externalized authorization; this binding adopts AuthZEN's JSON/HTTP profile of that model, not a new one.¶
The end-to-end flow this binding realizes:¶
Agent PEP PDP Access Request Service | | | | |- action ->| | | | | validate token | | | |- evaluation -->| | | | request | decide vs Mission | | |<- permit ------| | | | (+ context) | | | | execute | | | |- Execution --->| | | | Evidence | commit / release | |<- result -| | | | | | | | |<- deny --------| | | | (+ access_request) | | |- submit access request ------------->| | |<--------------- approval ------------| | |- re-evaluate ->| |¶
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 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
Two member-presence conventions extend that vocabulary:¶
The member is present when the stated condition holds and absent otherwise. The condition accompanies each member so marked.¶
The sender includes the member when it holds the member's value. A receiver MUST NOT infer meaning from the member's absence.¶
This document uses JSON [RFC8259] as the data model for all PDP requests, responses, and evidence objects. JCS canonicalization [RFC8785] applies wherever an integrity hash is computed, under the canonicalization rules of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]; this document does not define a second canonicalization.¶
"SHA-256" refers to [RFC6234]. A digest is encoded in the
integrity-anchor encoded form of
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]: sha-256: followed by the
base64url, no-padding encoding of the digest.¶
The terms Policy Enforcement Point (PEP), Policy Decision Point (PDP),
consequential action, Resource policy, decision, Mission state source,
enforcement scope, high-consequence classes, parameter-bound, and the
action-class names (consequential read, consequential write,
irreversible action, external commitment, and privileged
administration) are used as defined in
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]. The Mission claim
(id, issuer, authority_hash), the integrity anchors
(intent_hash, authority_hash), and authorization_details
entries of type mission_resource_access are used as defined in
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission].¶
Additional terms specific to this binding:¶
Defined by the runtime profile
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). This binding carries
only the wire member policy_view_id
(Section 4).¶
The component that, at derivation, validates the Mission's authority
and records the derivation-time facts the PDP later checks (such as a
capability source_digest, Section 9). In the
issuance profile this is the Mission Issuer; this profile uses the
term where the recording role is what matters.¶
The runtime enforcement evidence record emitted by the PDP, in the concrete object form of Section 7.¶
The record emitted by the PEP or executor after the authorized action's outcome is determined (Section 8).¶
The record a PEP emits for a refusal that occurs before any PDP decision (Section 7.2).¶
The component that carries out a permitted action and emits Execution Evidence. It is the PEP in the common case, or a distinct component where the requesting PEP and the executing component differ (Section 8).¶
A component or role that reads Decision Evidence and Execution Evidence to reconstruct or verify a decision after the fact.¶
HTTP message examples follow the AuthZEN specification [AUTHZEN] for the decision request and response, and [RFC9457] for problem-details error bodies where a deployment carries them outside the AuthZEN envelope.¶
This binding inherits the substrate requirements of the runtime
profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), whose decision
contract is defined against the Mission model rather than against
OAuth 2.0 mechanics. OAuth enters only through the credential-derived
decision inputs (the token's sub, client_id, cnf,
authorization_details, and mission claim), which the substrate's
Mission-bound credential supplies. A deployment on another Mission
substrate maps that substrate's credential to the same inputs and uses
this binding unchanged.¶
The PDP evaluates a Mission against an action through a materialized
policy view. The materialized policy view, its trusted-compiler and
reproducibility rules, its bounded-fidelity property, and the
content-addressed policy_view_id with its mission-policy-view
integrity envelope are defined by the runtime profile
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). That envelope's
committed payload binds the Mission's mission_id and authority_hash,
so a consistency check between a decision request and the loaded view is
an equality test on those values (Section 5). Nothing in this
binding requires the PDP to be remote: a PDP embedded in or colocated
with its PEP, evaluating against a loaded materialized policy view,
is a conforming deployment, and the decision's network cost is then
paid per freshness window rather than per action.¶
This binding carries only the wire member. policy_view_id appears in
the PDP request and response context (Section 5.2,
Section 6.4) as the content-addressed correlator
between a permit, its evidence, and the view the PDP evaluated against.
This profile does not pick a concrete policy-language wire form for the
materialized view. Implementations MAY use canonical input bundles the
AuthZEN PDP consumes directly, or an engine-native artifact. Compiling
a Mission into an engine-native policy artifact and standardizing a
policy-view carriage format are out of scope
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
The PDP request realizes the runtime profile's abstract decision
contract over the OpenID AuthZEN Authorization API [AUTHZEN]. AuthZEN
defines a top-level envelope with subject, resource, action, and
context members. This profile binds the Mission-bound decision inputs
into that envelope. It does not change which inputs MUST be evaluated;
those are defined by the runtime profile.¶
This binding is used after ordinary access-token validation under [I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]: the PEP MUST NOT ask a PDP to authorize an action from unverified token claims, and the PEP-PDP channel MUST be integrity-protected and mutually authenticated as that profile requires.¶
| AuthZEN member | Mission-bound binding |
|---|---|
subject
|
The principal the decision is requested for. |
resource
|
The fine-grained target object the action names (for example, a specific journal entry), for Resource-policy evaluation. It is NOT the field matched against the approved entry's resource; see below. |
action
|
The requested action identifier (for example, journal-entries.write), which the PDP evaluates against the approved actions per [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]. |
context
|
Carries the Mission-bound context object defined below. |
The runtime profile requires the PDP to confirm that the action falls
within an approved Authority Set entry by matching the action's
resource and action identity against that entry's resource and
actions ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). In this
binding, the approved entry's resource (the protected-resource or
audience URI, for example https://erp.example.com) is matched against
context.audience, not against the AuthZEN resource member. The
AuthZEN resource carries the finer-grained object identity used only
for Resource-policy evaluation. A PDP MUST perform the entry match
against context.audience; matching it against the AuthZEN resource
member is non-conforming and will diverge across deployments.¶
The AuthZEN subject is the token's authenticated sub: the Subject
the Mission's authority is exercised for
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]). It does not change under
delegation. The acting agent's client_id and any act delegation
chain are carried in context.actor, never in subject. The PDP binds
the permit to subject together with the actor context, and the
confused-deputy check ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime])
re-verifies that the action is for the same Subject it was authorized
for.¶
subject.type is user unless the deployment profiles another value.
subject.id is the token's authenticated sub. subject.properties.iss
is REQUIRED when known (Section 2), carrying the
issuer that authenticated the Subject, so a sub is disambiguated
across issuers; a PEP that cannot establish the Subject's issuer omits
it.¶
The mission member identifies the governance record and its current
materialized view:¶
id:REQUIRED. A string. The Mission's id.¶
issuer:REQUIRED. A string containing a URI. The Mission's issuer.¶
authority_hash:REQUIRED. A string. The Authority Set integrity anchor, in the integrity-anchor encoded form ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]).¶
state:CONDITIONAL. A string. The current Mission lifecycle state the PEP established from its Mission state source ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). REQUIRED where the deployment's declared state-source placement has the PEP supply state; absent where state establishment is placed with the PDP, whose obligation the PDP-side consistency checks state (Section 5).¶
version:OPTIONAL. An integer. The Mission's state version as the status
profile defines it ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]),
populated where the PEP holds it, under the same conditionality as
state. It lets the PDP compare the PEP's observation against the
state version committed in its loaded materialized policy view
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) and treat a mismatch as
staleness.¶
policy_version:REQUIRED when known. A string. The policy_version recorded at the
approval event. It is a Mission-record field
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]) and is not carried on the
mission claim or the introspection projection, so a PEP that is not
co-located with the Mission record may not have it; such a PEP omits
it and relies on policy_view_id for view correlation. A PEP that can
obtain it (for example, co-located with the issuer) includes it.¶
policy_view_id:OPTIONAL. A string. The materialized view identifier (Section 4). The PDP is authoritative for the current view, so a PEP need not supply it; a PEP that has the value supplies it and the PDP uses it as a content-addressed correlator. When present it is checked as in Section 5.¶
This context anchors the Mission's approved Authority Set through
authority_hash. Where a Mission participates in a companion that
overlays evaluated authority on top of the approved set, for example
Mission Containment's Effective Authority Set
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-containment]), the PDP
evaluates the request against that overlaid set, not the approved
set alone, per the runtime profile's Authority decision input
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). This document defines no
member carrying such an overlay's evaluated state. A companion
profile MAY extend the mission context with the member it needs,
by specification, mirroring the denial-reason extension rule
(Section 6.4): an extension member name MUST
be a collision-resistant name or a name coordinated within this
document family, and a PDP that does not recognize an extension
member evaluates the approved Authority Set unchanged. A denial
produced against the overlaid set carries the overlay's own denial
reason, not out_of_authority: the Containment profile's
authority_contained denies capability the Approver granted and the
issuer later removed, a distinct history from capability never
approved
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-containment]).¶
The actor member carries the authenticated actor context when
delegation is in effect, reconstructed from the access token's act
claim and the token's authenticated client identity per
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]:¶
client_id:REQUIRED when known. A string. The authenticated client identity.¶
client_instance_id:OPTIONAL. A string. A deployment-defined client-instance correlator when the PEP can establish one.¶
act:OPTIONAL. An array of objects. The delegation chain projection, ordered root to leaf. For a single actor, the array has one member.¶
The actor member carries the delegation chain only. Provenance beyond
the delegation chain (the tool a request invoked, a named workflow
step, a human approver) MUST NOT be encoded inside the act chain;
the PDP evaluates the act chain as defined by the runtime profile,
and provenance is recorded in dedicated evidence fields where the
deployment captures it.¶
Where tokens carry instance identity
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-client-instance-assertion]), the act
entry this projection already copies carries the instance identifier
and, under the agent profile
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-ai-agent-instance]), issuer-minted
provenance such as agent_instance_id and agent_model. Fleet
deployments therefore get which-instance-acted attribution in Decision
Evidence and, through the decision_id link, in Execution Evidence,
without new members.¶
The credential member carries token-derived facts the PEP has already
validated and that the PDP needs to enforce the runtime decision's
time, issuer, and sender-constraint checks:¶
issuer:REQUIRED when known. A string containing a URI. The token issuer.¶
expires_at:REQUIRED when the token carries an expiry. An RFC 3339 [RFC3339] timestamp corresponding to the token expiry.¶
confirmation:OPTIONAL. An object. A sender-constraint confirmation value or digest of that value, included only after the PEP has verified the proof-of-possession check for the presented token.¶
The PEP MUST NOT include unverified credential claims in this member.¶
When parameter binding is required for the requested action's class under [I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime], the PEP supplies:¶
parameters:CONDITIONAL. An object. When present, it MUST be the
operation-profile-normalized parameter object
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]): the same bytes the
parameter_digest is computed over, so the PDP's recomputation
matches. The shape is action-specific. The PEP MAY omit parameters
and supply only parameter_digest where the raw values are sensitive
(Section 13), but only when the PDP can still enforce
the applicable parameter policy from the digest, the supplied
parameter_attributes, or local state. If the PDP needs raw parameter
values to evaluate an applicable constraint and they are supplied
through neither parameters nor the equivalent privacy-preserving
parameter_attributes, it MUST deny with parameter_violation.¶
parameter_digest:REQUIRED for parameter-bound classes. A string.
The parameter_digest defined by
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]. This profile carries
that value on the wire; it does not define a second digest or
canonicalization. The executing PEP recomputes and
reverifies the digest immediately before acting, and the PDP
recomputes it over any supplied parameters, both as that section
requires.¶
idempotency_key:CONDITIONAL. A string, distinct from parameters and
parameter_digest. The idempotency key the Operation Profile requires
for a non-idempotent action in the high-consequence classes
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); it identifies one intended
execution of the normalized action, so a legitimate re-execution mints
a new key. REQUIRED where the Operation Profile defines one for the
action. When the key and the normalized parameters match a prior
decision whose execution outcome is unresolved or completed within the
reconciliation window, the PDP MUST deny with duplicate_suppressed,
or route to action_approval_required
(Section 6.4).¶
parameter_attributes:OPTIONAL. An object. Privacy-preserving attributes derived from the
action parameters that the PEP supplies for constraint evaluation when
it withholds raw parameters (Section 13). It is the
wire carriage of the derived attributes the runtime profile's privacy
carve-out relies on ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); each
member is a deployment-defined attribute the applicable constraints
evaluate against. A constraint the PDP cannot evaluate from
parameter_digest, parameter_attributes, or local state MUST fail
closed (Section 5).¶
audience:REQUIRED. A string. The PEP's audience or protected-resource identifier.¶
freshness:CONDITIONAL. An object, REQUIRED whenever state is present: the
freshness of the Mission state the PEP relied on, conveying the
runtime profile's freshness inputs on the wire. Members:¶
mode:REQUIRED. A string. One of fresh, cached, or event_driven
(Section 10).¶
freshness_at:REQUIRED in every mode. An RFC 3339 [RFC3339] timestamp. When the PEP's view of the Mission state was current.¶
mission_status_issued_at:REQUIRED for cached and event_driven, OPTIONAL for fresh. An
RFC 3339 timestamp. When the relied-on Mission state was issued.¶
mission_status_expires_at:REQUIRED for cached and event_driven, OPTIONAL for fresh. An
RFC 3339 timestamp. When the relied-on Mission state (or its
lease) expires.¶
The deployment's maximum staleness bound, and the rule that a
consequential action MUST fail closed when the Mission cannot be
established as active within that bound, are defined by the runtime
profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); the
freshness object is only their wire representation.¶
The external-communication predicate is parameter-dependent: whether an action carries data outside the deployment's trust boundary depends on the concrete request parameters, not on the action class alone ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), so the PDP has no class-only way to recognize one. The PEP, at the last controllable boundary, computes the predicate from the request parameters and marks the action:¶
external_communication:CONDITIONAL. A boolean. true when the PEP determines, from the
request parameters at the last controllable boundary, that the action
carries data to a recipient outside the deployment's trust boundary
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). REQUIRED for every action
in a class for which the deployment declares PDP-enforced taint, so
the taint requirement has a deterministic PDP-side trigger; OPTIONAL
otherwise.¶
The OPTIONAL taint member carries the harness's untrusted-content
determination ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-harness]) for the
requested action, when the deployment routes taint enforcement
through the PDP, as the value of context.taint:¶
{
"tainted": true,
"granularity": "parameter",
"source_class": "web_fetch"
}
¶
tainted:REQUIRED when taint is present. A boolean. Whether a bound
parameter of the action derives from tainted content (under
granularity parameter) or tainted content has entered the
governed session (under granularity session).¶
granularity:REQUIRED when taint is present. A string, parameter or
session: the trigger granularity the harness established.¶
source_class:OPTIONAL. A string. The deployment-defined class of the tainting
source (for example, web_fetch, inbound_message,
third_party_document), for policy and evidence.¶
Absence of taint means the harness did not route the determination
through the decision request, not that the action is untainted; the
harness's own egress rule then applies. That reading is confined to
harness-enforced deployments. When the deployment's Enforcement Scope
Statement declares PDP-enforced taint for an action class
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]):¶
The PDP MUST require context.taint on every decision in that class
whose context.external_communication is true
(Section 5.7) or whose action_class is
external_commitment, and MUST deny with taint_context_missing
when it is absent.¶
When taint is present with tainted true on such an action, the
PDP MUST deny or return action_approval_required
(Section 6.4) unless a fresh action-bound
approval bound to the action's parameters is present in the decision
context.¶
The PDP MUST record the presented taint context in Decision Evidence.¶
The OPTIONAL action_approval member carries an action-bound approval
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) the PEP obtained for the
requested action, as the value of context.action_approval. The runtime
profile owns the approval artifact; this member is only its wire
carriage. Its members:¶
id:REQUIRED when action_approval is present. A string. The approval
identifier, for example ARAP's approval.id [ARAP].¶
state:OPTIONAL. A string. The signed approval state, for example ARAP's
signed approval.state [ARAP], when the deployment carries the
approval by value rather than by reference.¶
approved_at:REQUIRED when action_approval is present. An RFC 3339 [RFC3339]
timestamp. When the approval was granted, so the PDP can enforce the
deployment's maximum approval age
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
approved_until:REQUIRED when action_approval is present. An RFC 3339 [RFC3339]
timestamp, ARAP's approval expiry [ARAP] (ARAP's approval.approved_until).
The PDP MUST NOT accept the approval for re-evaluation after it,
independent of the deployment's maximum approval age.¶
parameter_digest:REQUIRED when action_approval is present. A string. The
parameter_digest the approval is bound to. The PDP MUST match it
against the request's parameter_digest; a mismatch means the
approval does not cover these parameters.¶
When deployment or Resource policy requires an action-bound approval and
context.action_approval is absent, is older than the deployment's
maximum approval age ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), is past
its approved_until, or is bound to a different parameter_digest, the
PDP MUST deny with action_approval_required
(Section 6.4). The PDP MUST record the presented
approval id in Decision Evidence.¶
The OPTIONAL mission_history member carries the runtime profile's
History decision input ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) on
the wire, as the value of context.mission_history: an array of
objects, each naming one predicate over the established Mission's
prior evidence that the requested action depends on. Members of each
entry:¶
predicate:REQUIRED. A string. The predicate identifier. This document
defines action_class_completed. An extension value MUST be
either a collision-resistant name or a name coordinated within
this document family, under the same rule as denial reasons
(Section 6.4).¶
action_class:REQUIRED when predicate is action_class_completed. A string.
A runtime action class name, from the same value space as the
Decision Evidence action_class member
(Section 7).¶
action_class_completed is satisfied when the PDP's evidence store
holds, for the established Mission, at least one Decision Evidence
record with decision permit and the named action_class, and
every such record has a linked Execution Evidence record
(Section 8) whose outcome is completed. For
a migration Mission whose copy steps are consequential writes, the
delete step names its precondition:¶
[
{
"predicate": "action_class_completed",
"action_class": "consequential_write"
}
]
¶
The PDP MUST evaluate each named predicate against its own evidence store. A caller-supplied history value is never evidence: an entry names the predicate the request depends on and carries no result member, and the PDP MUST NOT accept a predicate outcome asserted through any other context member.¶
The PDP MUST refuse the evaluation of an entry whose predicate
value it does not recognize, treating the predicate as not
establishable, consistent with this binding's unknown-value
conventions (Section 6.4). Where deployment or
Resource policy requires a history predicate that is unsatisfied or
cannot be established, the PDP MUST deny with
history_not_satisfied (Section 6.4); the
runtime profile fixes the fail-closed posture and the evidence
store's freshness discipline
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). The PDP MUST record the
evaluated predicates and their outcomes in Decision Evidence
(Section 7).¶
For catalog-sourced actions, the PEP supplies the capability-source
binding in context.capability_source using the object defined in
Section 9. For non-catalog actions, this member is
absent.¶
The policy_view_id values in this document's examples
(sha-256:kP3xR9sQ...) differ from the runtime profile's worked
materialized-view value (sha-256:fuMqn6Nb...): this deployment's
view payload includes the engine-evaluable form, so it hashes
differently. Both are valid views of the same Mission.¶
For the ERP reconciliation Mission:¶
A PDP that also serves non-Mission AuthZEN traffic MUST NOT downgrade:
for an action within a runtime enforcement scope it mediates, a request
whose context lacks the mission member (Section 5.2) is
malformed under this binding, and the PDP MUST refuse it rather than
evaluate it against non-Mission policy alone. A permit issued to an
in-scope consequential action without Mission evaluation is an
enforcement bypass, not a decision
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
In addition to evaluating the decision inputs the runtime profile requires, the PDP MUST verify that the AuthZEN-carried envelope is self-consistent:¶
When present, the Mission state conveyed in context.mission.state
is exactly
active; every other value, recognized or not, is non-active per the
issuance profile's forward-compatibility rule
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]) and the PDP returns
mission_inactive (Section 6.4). Where state
establishment is placed with the PDP and the member is absent
(Section 5.2), the PDP MUST establish state from its own
source or deny with stale_state. A PDP with
direct access to a Mission state source MUST prefer its own fresher
view over context.mission.state, and MUST return mission_inactive
when its view disagrees with the PEP-supplied state. PEP-supplied
state is a floor, never a substitute for a state source the PDP can
itself consult.¶
The id and authority_hash in context.mission equal the
mission_id and authority_hash committed in the materialized
policy view the PDP has loaded for this Mission
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); the PDP returns
view_inconsistent on any inequality.¶
When context.mission.policy_view_id is present, it MUST equal
the loaded view's policy_view_id, and the PDP returns
view_inconsistent on inequality.¶
When context.mission.version is present, the PDP compares it
against the state version committed in the loaded view
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) and treats a mismatch as
staleness (stale_state): one side has missed a committed change.¶
A PDP MUST NOT fail a decision solely because the optional
policy_view_id or policy_version was omitted; the view the PDP
loaded is authoritative.¶
When context.credential.expires_at is present, it has not passed;
otherwise the PDP returns credential_invalid.¶
The context.freshness the PEP supplied is within the deployment's
staleness bound; otherwise the PDP returns stale_state, with the
freshness-window violation in the denial reason.¶
For an action whose class requires parameter binding
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]),
context.parameter_digest MUST be present; if it is absent the PDP
returns parameter_violation. When context.parameters is also
present, the PDP-recomputed digest MUST match
context.parameter_digest, otherwise parameter_violation. When
parameters is omitted under the privacy carve-out
(Section 5.5), the PDP MUST still be able to evaluate every
applicable parameter constraint from the digest, the supplied
context.parameter_attributes, or local state, and returns
parameter_violation if it cannot. A parameter-bound action MUST NOT
be permitted without a verified parameter_digest.¶
For a catalog-sourced action whose approved entry recorded a
capability source binding at derivation
(Section 9), context.capability_source MUST be
present and match the approved binding: the presented source_digest,
computed over the capability's current extracted definition
(Section 9.1), MUST equal the recorded value, and, where
a catalog_digest was recorded, the presented catalog_digest MUST
equal it likewise; otherwise the PDP returns capability_drift.
Whether an action is catalog-sourced, and which digests were
recorded, are determined from the materialized policy view, not from
the PEP's request; where no source binding was recorded, this check
does not apply.¶
The time comparisons this binding performs (a permit's
permit_expires_at at the PEP, the context.freshness window and
context.credential.expires_at at the PDP, and the action-approval
maximum age, Section 5.9) MAY allow a small leeway to absorb
clock skew between the components. Any leeway MUST NOT exceed the
deployment's maximum clock skew, and the deployment MUST publish that
maximum-skew assumption in its Enforcement Scope Statement
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). A value outside its window
by more than the published maximum skew MUST fail closed: an expired
permit, a stale freshness window, or an expired credential is refused,
and the leeway never extends a permit lease or freshness lease beyond
its bound plus the published skew.¶
The AuthZEN evaluations (boxcar) endpoint MAY be used to submit several Mission-bound decisions in one request. Batching is a transport optimization and changes none of the per-item enforcement semantics: each item is evaluated independently and on the same terms as a single request.¶
Each item yields its own Decision Evidence Object with its own
decision_id and sequence, assigned in request order.¶
Any metered bounds apply per item in request order ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-metering]).¶
Permits are per item, so a boxcar MAY return a mix of permits and denials.¶
The AuthZEN options member MUST NOT request short-circuit or
fail-fast semantics; a PDP MUST evaluate every item independently
and MUST ignore any option that would suppress evaluation of a
later item after an earlier denial.¶
A batch request for two journal-entry writes under the ERP
reconciliation Mission, where the second exceeds the entry's
max_amount ceiling of 500.00 USD. The shared subject is hoisted
to the request's default members per [AUTHZEN]; each item carries its
complete context:¶
The response returns one decision per item, in request order; the
first is a permit and the second a parameter_violation deny, whose
failing max_amount key is listed in that item's Decision
Evidence contributing_constraints:¶
{
"evaluations": [
{
"decision": true,
"context": {
"decision_id": "dec_2FpQ8kV5nR1tX7mB4sJ9eL6wYc",
"action_class": "irreversible_action",
"class_source": "deployment",
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:WPVi6EnQ7H9Fh-qk9ADxmTg8zruOdVUX1esl-v3TfCI",
"policy_view_id":
"sha-256:kP3xR9sQ7nM2vL4tY6bD1eF8jC5wH0pV2nR3kQ4mZ7t",
"permit_expires_at": "2026-11-02T08:15:00Z",
"single_use": true
}
},
{
"decision": false,
"context": {
"decision_id": "dec_6JwN3xT9rQ4mV8kP1sB5eZ2yLd",
"denial_reason": "parameter_violation",
"action_class": "irreversible_action",
"class_source": "deployment",
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:mzFwtXAT6_hY0v8_NFHMDJG39HFuWY2fRcOCSFGDyyE",
"policy_view_id":
"sha-256:kP3xR9sQ7nM2vL4tY6bD1eF8jC5wH0pV2nR3kQ4mZ7t"
}
}
]
}
¶
An evaluation exchange carries metered and single-use consequences, so its transport behavior is specified, not assumed:¶
A PEP MUST bound each evaluation call with a timeout inside the
action class's staleness budget and treat expiry as
pdp_unreachable (Section 7.2): fail closed, never a
permit.¶
A PEP MAY retry an evaluation whose response was lost, carrying the same normalized parameters and idempotency key. The runtime profile's retransmission rule then returns the prior decision where its permit is unexpired and unconsumed ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), and metering MUST NOT charge the bound twice for the retried request ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-metering]).¶
A PDP under overload sheds load explicitly: HTTP 429 with
Retry-After. The PEP treats it as pdp_unreachable for the
action at hand and MUST NOT retry before Retry-After elapses.¶
A PDP MAY publish a maximum batch size and refuse an oversized boxcar with HTTP 413; the PEP splits the batch rather than dropping items.¶
The PDP returns its permit or denial in the AuthZEN response
[AUTHZEN]: a boolean decision and an optional context object.
Runtime denials are successful evaluations and are represented as
decision: false with the context members below, not as transport
errors. This section defines the response context members, the permit
and denial response shapes, the denial-reason classification with its
complete coverage of the runtime profile's failure conditions, and the
rules that keep a permit bound to the PEP, channel, and inputs it was
issued for.¶
This profile defines the following AuthZEN response context members:¶
decision_id:REQUIRED. A string. The Decision Evidence identifier for this decision.¶
denial_reason:REQUIRED when decision is false. A string from the set of
Section 6.4, including any
specification-defined extension under that section's extensibility
rule; a consumer MUST treat an unrecognized value as a deny and MUST NOT attach any other semantics to it. A constraint violation uses
parameter_violation; the specific failing constraints keys are
carried in the Decision Evidence contributing_constraints, not here.¶
action_class:REQUIRED. A string. The runtime action class the PDP applied, from
the value set of Section 7, so the PEP can verify
it is enforcing that class's permit controls. When the PEP has itself
established a stricter class for the action, from its deployment
classification or a resource floor it knows
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), the PEP MUST enforce the
stricter class's permit controls; for a high-consequence class that
includes refusing a permit that lacks single_use.¶
class_source:REQUIRED when action_class is present. A string. One of default,
resource_floor, or deployment (Section 7).¶
parameter_digest:REQUIRED when the request was parameter-bound. A string. The digest bound to the decision.¶
policy_view_id:REQUIRED. A string. The materialized policy view the PDP evaluated. The PDP is authoritative for the view, so it always knows and returns this value.¶
permit_expires_at:REQUIRED when decision is true. An RFC 3339 timestamp after
which the permit MUST NOT be used. The rules bounding its value
follow this list.¶
single_use:CONDITIONAL. A boolean. When true, the PEP MUST treat decision_id
as a single-use decision identifier. Absent, the permit is not
single-use. For an action in the high-consequence classes
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) the PDP MUST include
single_use: true, and the PEP MUST treat a high-consequence permit
lacking it as invalid.¶
insufficient_claims:OPTIONAL. An object. Present only for a step_up_required denial. It
MAY contain acr_values and amr_values members that identify the
authentication context Resource policy requires to lift the denial.¶
access_request:OPTIONAL. An object. Present on an out_of_authority or
action_approval_required denial when the deployment exposes it as
requestable under [ARAP]. It is the ARAP requestable-denial context:
the submission endpoint, the ARAP-required expires_at, and the
denial binding that ties a later access request to this evaluation
(denial_binding, this profile's name for ARAP's evaluation_id, with
the PDP-signed binding_token). Its presence does not change the
decision: false result and does not grant access.¶
No mode leaves the permit window unbounded on the wire.
permit_expires_at MUST NOT be later than the freshness time or lease
of the Mission state view the decision relied on
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); in particular, it MUST NOT
be later than a supplied
context.freshness.mission_status_expires_at. In fresh mode with no
supplied mission_status_expires_at, the PDP derives the bound from
its own state view: the view's freshness time or lease where the
source reports one, otherwise the deployment's published staleness
bound for the action's class.¶
When the PDP permits an action, it returns AuthZEN decision: true and
the context needed by the PEP to enforce the permit lease. The
decision_id, policy_view_id, and any parameter_digest bind the
response to the Decision Evidence and to the request inputs the PDP
evaluated. permit_expires_at and single_use express the permit
lifetime controls required by the runtime profile.¶
{
"decision": true,
"context": {
"decision_id": "dec_8K2nP4qV9rL3tY6sB1zN0eF7jB",
"action_class": "irreversible_action",
"class_source": "deployment",
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:WPVi6EnQ7H9Fh-qk9ADxmTg8zruOdVUX1esl-v3TfCI",
"policy_view_id":
"sha-256:kP3xR9sQ7nM2vL4tY6bD1eF8jC5wH0pV2nR3kQ4mZ7t",
"permit_expires_at": "2026-11-02T08:15:00Z",
"single_use": true
}
}
¶
A runtime denial is returned as decision: false with the context
members above:¶
{
"decision": false,
"context": {
"decision_id": "dec_5WcR2mT8xN4qV7kB1sJ6eL9yPd",
"denial_reason": "stale_state",
"action_class": "irreversible_action",
"class_source": "deployment",
"policy_view_id":
"sha-256:kP3xR9sQ7nM2vL4tY6bD1eF8jC5wH0pV2nR3kQ4mZ7t"
}
}
¶
For a step_up_required denial, the PDP MAY include
context.insufficient_claims, so the caller can satisfy the
Resource-policy authentication requirement through an OAuth step-up
authentication challenge [RFC9470] at the protected resource and
re-authenticate, without a Mission expansion. Because the requirement is
Resource policy and not a Mission constraint, satisfying it changes the
actor's authentication context, not the Mission or its Authority Set.¶
Malformed requests, authentication failures, or PDP processing errors that prevent evaluation MAY be returned as AuthZEN or transport-level errors; so is an in-scope request refused for missing Mission context (Section 5). A deployment MAY additionally carry [RFC9457] problem details for structured error information when the PDP is consumed over HTTP outside the AuthZEN envelope.¶
When the PDP denies a consequential action, the failure condition is one defined by the runtime profile. This section binds those conditions to AuthZEN responses and gives the denial-reason identifiers carried in Decision Evidence:¶
out_of_authority: the action is not within the Authority Set.¶
step_up_required: Resource policy requires a stronger authentication
context for this action than the actor presents, and MAY be satisfied
by [RFC9470] step-up authentication (see the note after this list).¶
action_approval_required: deployment or Resource policy requires an
action-bound approval for this action
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) and a valid fresh
approval bound to the action's parameters is not present, is older
than the deployment's maximum approval age, or is bound to a different
parameter_digest. The PEP carries any such approval in
context.action_approval (Section 5.9); this profile does
not define the approval artifact, which the runtime profile owns.¶
taint_context_missing: the deployment declares PDP-enforced taint
for the action's class and the decision request carries no
context.taint (Section 5.8).¶
stale_state: the PEP-supplied freshness is outside the deployment's
staleness bound (a freshness-window violation).¶
view_inconsistent: the request's Mission id, authority_hash, or
policy_view_id does not equal the committed values in the
materialized policy view the PDP loaded, so the request and the loaded
view disagree on which Mission or view is in force. This is a view
inconsistency, not staleness.¶
mission_inactive: the Mission state is not active.¶
mission_binding_failed: in externally-established Mission binding
mode ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), the PDP could not
verify the supplied Mission reference against the acting credential
under the binding's join, so no Mission is established.¶
actor_invalid: the required act chain is missing or malformed, so
the PDP cannot establish the runtime actor context
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
credential_invalid: token-derived credential facts supplied by the
PEP are expired, inconsistent, or otherwise not usable for a runtime
decision.¶
parameter_violation: parameters violate a constraint the PDP
evaluated, the recomputed digest does not match, or a required
parameter_digest is absent for a parameter-bound action.¶
duplicate_suppressed: the request's idempotency_key and normalized
parameters match a prior decision whose execution outcome is
unresolved or completed within the reconciliation window, so the PDP
suppresses a duplicate execution of the same normalized action
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). The PDP MAY instead route
to action_approval_required.¶
resource_policy: Resource policy refuses the action independently
of Mission authority.¶
quota_exceeded: a metered runtime bound is exhausted. The runtime
profile fixes the fail-closed posture for consumption bounds
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); the metering semantics
and settlement exchange are defined by the experimental metering
companion ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-metering]).¶
capability_drift: for a catalog-sourced action whose approved entry
recorded a capability source binding (Section 9),
the digest of the action's current extracted capability definition
differs from the source_digest committed at derivation, a recorded
catalog_digest no longer matches the retrieved source, or the
presented tool_id is outside the approved set (see the note after
this list).¶
unsupported_authorization_type: the action targets an
authorization_details type the PDP does not understand or cannot
enforce, so it refuses rather than guess the type's semantics
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
constraint_unsupported: an applicable constraint or consumption
bound on the entry is unrecognized or unmetered, so the PDP cannot
enforce it and refuses ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).
This is distinct from parameter_violation, which is a constraint the
PDP evaluated and found violated.¶
history_not_satisfied: a deployment- or Resource-policy-required
history predicate (Section 5.10) is not satisfied: the PDP
established it false, could not establish it, could not consult
its evidence store within the declared staleness bound, or does
not recognize the presented predicate value. The per-predicate
outcomes are in Decision Evidence
(Section 7), so the unsatisfied and
unavailable cases stay distinguishable after the fact.¶
step_up_required is a Resource-policy condition, not a Mission
constraint: the issuance profile's acr is an approval-time
requirement on the Approver, recorded on the Mission and neither
carried on derived tokens nor evaluated per action
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]), and the issuance profile
defines no per-action amr constraint. It is a specialization of
resource_policy that names the step-up affordance.¶
capability_drift applies only when a source binding was recorded and
the digest comparison ran; an invoked identity outside the approved
set for which no source binding was recorded is out_of_authority,
not capability_drift.¶
This document defines no other denial-reason values. A companion
profile MAY extend the set by specification; an extension value MUST
be either a collision-resistant name (following the Collision-Resistant
Name guidance of [RFC7519] Section 4.2) or a name coordinated within
this document family, so values cannot collide. A consumer of a denial
reason, wherever it is carried (the Decision Evidence denial_reason,
Section 7, or the response context.denial_reason,
Section 6.1), MUST treat an unrecognized value as
a deny and MUST NOT attach any other semantics to it, mirroring the
issuance profile's open lifecycle state space
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]).¶
A deny is terminal for the attempted action: the agent does not proceed
on a denial. A deny need not end the task, however. For an
out_of_authority or action_approval_required denial, the PDP MAY
mark the denial requestable by including a context.access_request
object, composing this binding with the AuthZEN Access Request and
Approval Profile [ARAP]. The PEP then submits an ARAP access request
bound to the denied evaluation, an independent approver or policy
adjudicates it (synchronously when policy auto-approves, otherwise
asynchronously through the portable ARAP task handle), and on approval
the PEP re-evaluates against the PDP. This is the demand-driven,
runtime-initiated counterpart to the pre-consented drawdown of the
experimental progressive authorization companion
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-progressive]): the agent starts
narrow and requests the authority it discovers it needs, instead of
holding it up front.¶
Auto-approval is bounded the same way in-ceiling drawdown is
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-progressive]): a deployment SHOULD
rate-limit and anomaly-check synchronous auto-approval, and MUST NOT
auto-approve a request for an action_approval_required denial in the
irreversible, external-commitment, or privileged-administration classes
without an independent approver, so a compromised agent cannot drive the
request loop to escalate itself unattended.¶
Two ARAP properties carry weight here and match this profile's stance.
First, an ARAP approval is input context, not a bearer grant: the PDP
remains authoritative at enforcement, so the PEP MUST obtain a fresh
decision, and any resulting permit and evidence remain subject to this
profile. The action-bound approval an action_approval_required denial
calls for ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) is exactly
such an approval, and ARAP's approval.id or signed approval.state is
its carrier. Second, to persist authority beyond the single
re-evaluated action rather than re-requesting it per call, an approved
request MAY be realized as a Mission expansion
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-expansion]): as the fresh human
approval that creates the successor Mission or, where the experimental
progressive authorization companion is deployed, as a
policy-adjudicated in-ceiling expansion
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-progressive]).¶
A requestable denial carries context.access_request alongside the
denial members. Here deployment policy requires an action-bound
approval for the journal-entry write, no valid fresh approval is
present, and the PDP marks the denial requestable under [ARAP]:¶
{
"decision": false,
"context": {
"decision_id": "dec_7YbK4nQ9tR2xV6mL1sP8eJ3wZc",
"denial_reason": "action_approval_required",
"action_class": "irreversible_action",
"class_source": "deployment",
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:WPVi6EnQ7H9Fh-qk9ADxmTg8zruOdVUX1esl-v3TfCI",
"policy_view_id":
"sha-256:kP3xR9sQ7nM2vL4tY6bD1eF8jC5wH0pV2nR3kQ4mZ7t",
"access_request": {
"endpoint": "https://requests.example.com/access-requests",
"expires_at": "2026-11-02T09:14:00Z",
"denial_binding": "dec_7YbK4nQ9tR2xV6mL1sP8eJ3wZc",
"binding_token": "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6InBkcC1kZW5pYWwtYmluZGluZytqd3QifQ.eyJk..."
}
}
}
¶
The access_request members compose the ARAP requestable-denial context
[ARAP]: expires_at and the PDP-signed binding_token are ARAP's, and
denial_binding is this profile's name for ARAP's evaluation reference.
Its presence does not change the decision: false result: the PEP refuses
the action, submits the access request, and re-evaluates only after
approval.¶
Mapping to [ARAP]: this profile carries ARAP's context under mission
names. context.action_approval (Section 5.9) is ARAP's
context.approval; access_request.denial_binding is ARAP's
evaluation_id and access_request.binding_token is ARAP's binding_token;
the action_approval_required reason (Section 6.4)
is ARAP's context.reason value approval_required. An ARAP implementer
maps these names to drive an unmodified ARAP request and approval exchange.¶
Every runtime failure condition, whether named in the runtime profile's
failure-mode table or in its other normative requirements
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), surfaces through exactly
one of three carriers in this binding: a Refusal Record for a PEP
refusal before any PDP decision (Section 7.2), a PDP
denial (denial_reason in the decision context and Decision
Evidence), or an Execution Evidence error for a failure after a
permit (Section 8). The table below is the
normative mapping for the conditions it names; extension identifiers
remain governed by each carrier's extensibility rule.¶
| Runtime failure condition | Carrier | Identifier |
|---|---|---|
| Token validation fails | Refusal Record |
token_invalid
|
Required mission claim absent |
Refusal Record |
mission_claim_missing
|
| PEP-PDP channel authentication or integrity fails | Refusal Record |
channel_failure
|
| PDP unreachable | Refusal Record |
pdp_unreachable
|
| Mission state not establishable at the PEP | Refusal Record |
state_unavailable
|
| Action outside the Authority Set (including an invoked identity outside the approved set with no recorded source binding), or the request would broaden it | PDP denial |
out_of_authority
|
| Resource policy requires a stronger authentication context | PDP denial |
step_up_required
|
| Required action-bound approval absent, stale, or parameter-mismatched | PDP denial |
action_approval_required
|
| Mission state stale (freshness-window violation) | PDP denial |
stale_state
|
Request Mission id, authority_hash, or policy_view_id inconsistent with the loaded view |
PDP denial |
view_inconsistent
|
Mission not active, including a passed expires_at
|
PDP denial |
mission_inactive
|
| External Mission-binding join verification fails | PDP denial |
mission_binding_failed
|
Required act chain missing or malformed |
PDP denial |
actor_invalid
|
| Credential facts expired or inconsistent | PDP denial |
credential_invalid
|
| Parameter constraint violated, PDP digest mismatch, or required digest absent | PDP denial |
parameter_violation
|
| Idempotency key and parameters match a prior unresolved or completed decision | PDP denial |
duplicate_suppressed
|
| Resource policy refuses the action | PDP denial |
resource_policy
|
| Consumption bound exhausted | PDP denial |
quota_exceeded
|
| Capability or catalog drift, or invoked identity outside the approved set when a source binding was recorded | PDP denial |
capability_drift
|
Unsupported authorization_details type |
PDP denial |
unsupported_authorization_type
|
| Unrecognized or unmetered constraint | PDP denial |
constraint_unsupported
|
| Policy-required history predicate unsatisfied or not establishable | PDP denial |
history_not_satisfied
|
| Effective parameters differ at the executing PEP | Execution Evidence |
parameter_mismatch
|
| Permit validity window passed at execution | Execution Evidence |
permit_expired
|
| Consumed single-use identifier presented again | Execution Evidence |
permit_consumed
|
| Operator or safety control suppressed execution | Execution Evidence |
kill_switch
|
A permit is valid only on the mutually authenticated channel and PEP
identity that requested it, and MUST NOT be relayed to another
component as a bearer grant. Where the requesting component and the
executing PEP differ, the executor MUST receive the signed Decision
Evidence (Section 7) and verify the runtime's binding
fields (the Mission reference and policy_view_id, audience,
subject, client_id, actor
context, action, resource, the authorizing entry or entry_digest,
and parameter_digest) from it before
acting, rather than trusting a relayed decision: true.¶
In such a split the executor is the enforcing component: it owns the
consumed-identifier store and honors the permit lease
(permit_expires_at and single_use, Section 6.1) under the
runtime profile's consumed-identifier rules
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), so relayed Decision Evidence
cannot be executed twice or after its lease. The requesting component's
possession of a permit does not consume it; consumption is recorded
where the action executes.¶
A PEP permit cache MUST key on the permit's bound fields (the Mission
reference and policy_view_id, audience, subject, client_id,
actor context, action, resource, the authorizing entry or
entry_digest, and parameter_digest) and MUST NOT key on freshness
telemetry (freshness_at, mission_status_issued_at,
mission_status_expires_at), whose per-request variation would
otherwise make the cache never hit. A cached permit cannot be reused for
a request that differs in any bound field, and its reuse is bounded in
time by permit_expires_at, not by the freshness telemetry.¶
The envelope rule fixes what a permit cache is for. A parameter-bound
class keys on parameter_digest, and a high-consequence permit is
single-use, so caching amortizes only repeat-identical,
non-single-use actions: reads and idempotent re-checks. The steady
state for consequential writes is one evaluation per action, and a
deployment sizes PDP capacity and placement to that rate, not to a
cache hit ratio ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
In a split topology the resource request the permit authorizes is
served by a Resource Server that did not see the PDP exchange. The PEP
SHOULD propagate the permit's decision_id to the resource request in
the Mission-Decision request header field (Section 14); the field value
is the decision_id, whose ABNF (Section 7) is
field-value-safe. The field is protected in transit per deployment: at
minimum it rides the TLS channel this binding already requires
(Section 12), and where the deployment signs resource
requests the signature MUST cover it.¶
A Resource Server that logs the received decision_id with the access
it serves closes the decision-to-access join: the Decision Evidence,
the Execution Evidence, and the Resource Server's access log then share
one identifier, so an access is joined to the decision that permitted
it without timestamp correlation. This extends the issuance profile's
recommendation that a Resource Server log the mission claim's id
and the token jti with each decision
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]): the decision identifier is
this profile's addition to that correlation set.¶
The field is a correlation aid, not an authorization. Its presence or value grants nothing, the Resource Server's token validation and PEP obligations are unchanged, and a Resource Server MUST NOT treat it as a permit; the permit-binding rules above govern.¶
The runtime profile requires a decision evidence record for every PDP decision on a consequential action and fixes the minimum content and local integrity requirements. This section gives the concrete object, canonicalization, and integrity envelope an AuthZEN deployment emits.¶
decision_id:REQUIRED. A string. Unique decision identifier. ABNF:
1*64( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" ). At least 128 bits of entropy.¶
mission:REQUIRED. An object. The PDP request's context.mission object,
extended with the facts below, so the evidence chains back to the
exact approved Mission. Sub-members:¶
id, issuer, authority_hash:REQUIRED. From the request's context.mission.¶
policy_view_id:REQUIRED. The PDP's own view identifier; the PDP always knows and populates it, whatever the request carried.¶
intent_hash:OPTIONAL. It is carried in neither the mission claim nor
introspection, so only a PDP with direct Mission-record access
can record it.¶
policy_version:OPTIONAL. From the request's context.mission, when known.¶
OPTIONAL. Recorded when known.¶
These hashes are the issuing AS's commitments cited as anchors; the PDP does not recompute them.¶
subject:REQUIRED. An object. PDP inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization.¶
resource:REQUIRED. An object. PDP inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization.¶
action:REQUIRED. An object. PDP inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization.¶
audience:REQUIRED. A string. PDP inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization.¶
action_class:REQUIRED. A string. The runtime action class the PDP applied to the
action: one of consequential_read, consequential_write,
irreversible_action, external_commitment, or
privileged_administration, naming the classes of
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]. Every decision this
binding records is on a consequential action, so the member is always
present.¶
class_source:REQUIRED when action_class is present. A string. How the applied
class was assigned: default (the runtime profile's default
classification), resource_floor (the resource's published
mission_action_class_floors floor set or raised it,
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), or deployment
(deployment policy assigned it).¶
actor:OPTIONAL. An object. PDP inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization.¶
credential:OPTIONAL. An object. Token-derived inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization. This member MUST contain only claims the PEP verified before invoking the PDP.¶
parameter_digest:OPTIONAL. A string. PDP inputs as supplied, after PDP-side normalization.¶
permit_expires_at:REQUIRED when decision is permit. An RFC 3339 [RFC3339]
timestamp. The permit-lease expiry the PDP returned
(Section 6.1), recorded so the durable evidence carries the
permit-lease control the decision was bound to.¶
single_use:CONDITIONAL. A boolean. The single-use control the PDP returned
(Section 6.1), recorded on the decision. REQUIRED and true
for a permit in the high-consequence classes.¶
request_digest:CONDITIONAL. A string. A privacy-preserving digest of the evaluation
request, in the integrity-anchor encoded form
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]). REQUIRED when
parameter_digest is absent for a consequential action, so the closed
object still carries the request digest the runtime profile requires
of every decision record ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
capability_source:OPTIONAL. An object. The catalog-source binding the PDP evaluated for catalog-sourced actions.¶
compensates_decision_id:OPTIONAL. A string. The decision_id of the action this decision
compensates, carrying the runtime profile's compensation link
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) so a compensating
action reconciles against the action it reverses.¶
decision:REQUIRED. A string. One of permit or deny.¶
contributing_constraints:REQUIRED when the decision turned on one or more authority or
constraint entries. An array of strings: the identifiers of the
constraints and entries the PDP evaluated (constraints keys,
authorization_details entry types). For a permit it records every
constraint key and entry type the decision relied on; for a deny it
MUST list every entry that failed. Omitting an entry the decision
turned on is non-conforming, so the array can be relied on to
reconstruct the decision basis.¶
sequence:REQUIRED. An integer. The per-Mission sequence indicator
the runtime profile requires, so the decision stream has a
verifiable order and gaps are detectable. MUST be zero or greater.
The sequence is scoped to the emitter identified by emitter: each
emitter maintains its own monotonically increasing per-Mission
sequence, and a verifier detects gaps per (Mission, emitter) rather
than expecting one ordering across emitters.¶
emitter:REQUIRED. An object. The identity of the component that emitted and
signed this record, with members id (REQUIRED, a string identifying
the emitting component) and role (REQUIRED, one of pdp, pep, or
executor). For Decision Evidence role is pdp. A companion
profile MAY register coordinated additional roles (harness,
egress, issuer) for records emitted under these conventions at
other enforcement points, or by the Mission Issuer's own retained
producers (for example, protected-event ingestion,
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-containment]). A verifier MUST
bind the emitter's signing key to the enforcement scope and audience
the record serves (Section 7.3).¶
hop_reference:OPTIONAL. An object. Present when the action this record concerns
was authorized under a continuation profile's continued credential
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-continuation]), attributing
the record to the specific hop that carried the authorization.
Sub-members: jti (REQUIRED, a string, the authorizing token's
identifier) and mission_id (REQUIRED, a string, the Mission the
continued credential carries); continuation_handle (OPTIONAL, a
string, the hop's identity-continuation handle, when present).
Absent for a decision not taken under a continuation. This member
formalizes, as a coordinated Decision Evidence member, the
continuation profile's requirement that execution-time evidence
record the continuation hop reference
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-continuation]).¶
denial_reason:CONDITIONAL. A string. Present when decision is deny. A value from
the set of Section 6.4, including any
specification-defined extension under that section's extensibility
rule; a consumer MUST treat an unrecognized value as a deny and MUST NOT attach any other semantics to it. When the denial
is a constraint violation, the value is parameter_violation and the
specific failing constraints keys are carried in
contributing_constraints, not in denial_reason, so the reason
enum and the open constraint-key space never mix in one field.¶
evaluated_at:authorizing_entry:OPTIONAL. An object. The authorization_details entry the decision
was evaluated against.¶
entry_digest:OPTIONAL. A string. The integrity-anchor encoded digest
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]) of that entry, for a
deployment that does not record the entry in full. A record of a
permit MUST carry authorizing_entry or entry_digest, per the
runtime record requirements
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
taint:OPTIONAL. An object. The presented taint context
(Section 5.8), recorded as supplied. REQUIRED when the
decision request carried context.taint.¶
mission_history:OPTIONAL. An array of objects. The presented history predicates
(Section 5.10), each recorded as supplied and extended
with an outcome member (REQUIRED, a string): satisfied,
not_satisfied (established false), or unavailable (not
establishable, including an unrecognized predicate value or an
evidence store that could not be consulted within its bound).
REQUIRED when the decision request carried
context.mission_history.¶
evidence_envelope:REQUIRED. An object. Integrity protection
(Section 7.3), carrying a format (string,
required) and a value (string, required).¶
A Decision Evidence Object is closed to uncoordinated extension: a
companion profile of the runtime contract MAY add members with short
names coordinated with this profile (for example, the metering
companion's consumption and settlement members, or a discovery
adjudication's resource_declaration_digest), any other extension
MUST use a collision-resistant name, and a consumer MUST ignore
members it does not understand and MUST NOT derive authority from any
member.¶
The Decision Evidence Object records a PDP decision, which is why its
PDP-derived members are REQUIRED. The runtime profile also requires an
evidence record for a PEP refusal that occurs before any PDP decision:
token validation failure, a missing mission claim, PEP-PDP channel
failure, PDP unreachability, or the PEP being unable to establish
Mission state ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). Such a
refusal has no PDP decision and cannot populate the PDP-derived members
above. An AuthZEN deployment records it as a Refusal Record, carrying
only facts the PEP verified:¶
refusal_id:REQUIRED. A string. Unique refusal identifier. ABNF:
1*64( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" ). At least 128 bits of entropy.¶
audience:REQUIRED. A string. The PEP's audience or protected-resource identifier.¶
action:REQUIRED. An object. The requested action descriptor, as the PEP established it.¶
resource:OPTIONAL. An object. The target object identity, when the PEP established one.¶
decision:REQUIRED. A string. Always deny.¶
denial_reason:REQUIRED. A string. One of token_invalid,
mission_claim_missing, channel_failure, pdp_unreachable, or
state_unavailable (where the deployment's state-source placement
has the PEP supply state, and it cannot establish it). These name PEP-side conditions and are disjoint from
the PDP denial reasons of Section 6.4; a
record that can populate the PDP-derived members is a Decision
Evidence Object instead.¶
evaluated_at:first_evaluated_at:OPTIONAL. An RFC 3339 timestamp. Present on an aggregated record:
the earliest refusal the record covers, with evaluated_at the
latest.¶
attempt_count:OPTIONAL. An integer. Present on an aggregated record: the number of refusals the record covers.¶
parameter_digest:CONDITIONAL. A string. REQUIRED for a parameter-bound action class.¶
request_digest:CONDITIONAL. A string. A privacy-preserving digest of the refused
request, in the form of Section 7.5. REQUIRED when
parameter_digest is absent, so the record meets the runtime
profile's record minimum
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
mission:OPTIONAL. An object. The Mission reference (id, issuer,
authority_hash), present only when the PEP verified the mission
claim before the failure (for example, on pdp_unreachable).¶
subject, actor, credential:OPTIONAL. Objects. Verified facts only, in the request forms of Section 5. For a token-validation failure, the record MUST NOT describe unverified token claims as authenticated facts ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
sequence:CONDITIONAL. An integer. REQUIRED when the record carries a verified
mission reference, continuing that emitter's per-Mission sequence
for that Mission (Section 7); absent when no
Mission was established.¶
emitter:REQUIRED. An object. The identity of the refusing PEP that emitted and
signed this record, in the form Decision Evidence defines
(Section 7), with role pep. A verifier MUST
bind the emitter's signing key to the enforcement scope and audience
the record serves (Section 7.3).¶
hop_reference:OPTIONAL. An object, in the form Decision Evidence defines (Section 7). Present only when the PEP verified enough of the presented credential, before the failure, to establish it was a continued credential.¶
evidence_envelope:REQUIRED. An object. Integrity protection in the form of
Section 7.3, emitted by the refusing PEP, whose
JWS protected typ is application/mission-refusal-record+json
(Section 14).¶
A Refusal Record is closed to uncoordinated extension under the same rule as Decision Evidence.¶
A sustained failure condition with a retrying agent otherwise yields
one signed record per attempt. A PEP MAY aggregate consecutive
refusals sharing denial_reason, audience, action, and the
parameter or request digest into one Refusal Record, carrying
first_evaluated_at, evaluated_at, and attempt_count.
Aggregation applies only to the PEP-side conditions of this section;
PDP denials remain one Decision Evidence Object per evaluation.¶
When the deployment establishes the Mission binding externally under
the runtime profile's binding-establishment step
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), absence of the mission
claim is not a pre-decision refusal and mission_claim_missing does
not apply; the external join's verification governs instead.¶
A PDP outage on the ERP reconciliation Mission, recorded by the PEP that failed closed:¶
{
"refusal_id": "ref_3VtM9kQ2xN7rB4sL8eP1jY5wZc",
"mission": {
"id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
"issuer": "https://as.example.com",
"authority_hash":
"sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ"
},
"audience": "https://erp.example.com",
"action": { "name": "journal-entries.write" },
"resource":
{ "type": "journal-entry", "id": "je_2026Q3_inv_8421" },
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:WPVi6EnQ7H9Fh-qk9ADxmTg8zruOdVUX1esl-v3TfCI",
"decision": "deny",
"denial_reason": "pdp_unreachable",
"sequence": 44,
"emitter": { "id": "pep.example.com", "role": "pep" },
"evaluated_at": "2026-11-02T08:16:11Z",
"evidence_envelope": {
"format": "jws-compact",
"value": "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6InBlcC1rZXkt..."
}
}
¶
The evidence_envelope carries the integrity protection over the
Decision Evidence content. This AuthZEN profile defines the concrete
serialization required by [I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]:
the Decision Evidence object is serialized as JCS [RFC8785] canonical
JSON before integrity protection. The default format is
jws-compact, a JWS Compact Serialization [RFC7515] whose payload is
the JCS canonical bytes of the Decision Evidence object with the
evidence_envelope member removed during signing. Verification
re-removes evidence_envelope and verifies the JWS against the
emitter's published signing key. For Decision Evidence emitted by a
PDP, the emitter is the PDP. For Execution Evidence emitted by a PEP or
executor, the emitter is that PEP or executor. For a Refusal Record,
the emitter is the refusing PEP.¶
A verifier MUST confirm that the signing key selected by the JWS kid
is the published key of the component named in the record's emitter
member, and that this key is bound to the enforcement scope and audience
the record serves (Section 5.6, the record's
audience). A verifier MUST reject a record whose signing key is not
published for that scope, so one component's key cannot sign evidence
for a resource, audience, or scope it does not serve.¶
The JWS protected header MUST carry:¶
kid: a key identifier resolvable in the emitter's published JWKS
(Section 12.5), so a verifier can select the
emitter's signing key independently.¶
alg: ES256 [RFC7518] is mandatory to implement; an
implementation MAY offer other JOSE algorithms but MUST implement
ES256.¶
typ: the registered media type of the evidence object being signed
(application/mission-decision-evidence+json for Decision Evidence,
application/mission-execution-evidence+json for Execution Evidence,
application/mission-refusal-record+json for Refusal Records,
Section 14). A verifier MUST reject a JWS whose protected typ is not
the media type of the object it is verifying, so signatures over one
record kind cannot be cross-used for another.¶
This rule is unaffected by the members Decision Evidence, Execution
Evidence, and Refusal Records share with each other and with other
evidence types, named once as a base shape
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-audit]). Shared member names describe
a common shape for readability; they carry no exemption, and the typ
check above remains the sole authority for which kind a signature
covers.¶
{
"evidence_envelope": {
"format": "jws-compact",
"value": "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6InBkcC1rZXkt..."
}
}
¶
This profile defines only the jws-compact format. Additional formats
MAY be defined by future specifications; implementations MUST reject
envelopes with unsupported formats.¶
{
"decision_id": "dec_8K2nP4qV9rL3tY6sB1zN0eF7jB",
"mission": {
"id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
"issuer": "https://as.example.com",
"authority_hash":
"sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ",
"intent_hash":
"sha-256:wQ7p4LHnX9Md0LqJ6sZJ8b8mZ3rN2xT5pV4lE6sQqYY",
"policy_version": "deploy-policy:v17",
"policy_view_id":
"sha-256:kP3xR9sQ7nM2vL4tY6bD1eF8jC5wH0pV2nR3kQ4mZ7t"
},
"subject": {
"type": "user",
"id": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR",
"properties": {
"iss": "https://idp.example.com"
}
},
"actor": {
"client_id": "s6BhdRkqt3",
"client_instance_id": "inst_macbook_7f3a",
"act": [
{
"iss": "https://as.example.com",
"sub": "s6BhdRkqt3"
}
]
},
"credential": {
"issuer": "https://as.example.com",
"expires_at": "2026-11-02T09:14:00Z"
},
"resource": {
"type": "journal-entry",
"id": "je_2026Q3_inv_8421"
},
"action": { "name": "journal-entries.write" },
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:WPVi6EnQ7H9Fh-qk9ADxmTg8zruOdVUX1esl-v3TfCI",
"audience": "https://erp.example.com",
"action_class": "irreversible_action",
"class_source": "deployment",
"permit_expires_at": "2026-11-02T08:15:00Z",
"single_use": true,
"decision": "permit",
"contributing_constraints": [
"mission_resource_access", "max_amount"
],
"sequence": 42,
"emitter": { "id": "pdp.example.com", "role": "pdp" },
"evaluated_at": "2026-11-02T08:14:03Z",
"evidence_envelope": {
"format": "jws-compact",
"value": "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6InBkcC1rZXkt..."
}
}
¶
Decision Evidence is durable and integrity-protected. It is the authoritative record of what the PDP evaluated, not proof that the action occurred.¶
For a consequential action that is not parameter-bound (here a
consequential read), the record carries request_digest in place of
parameter_digest. The runtime profile does not standardize the
digested request form, so the emitting deployment states the exact
input; this non-normative example digests exactly the following
evaluation-request summary object:¶
{
"action": "journal-entries.read",
"audience": "https://erp.example.com",
"mission_id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
"resource": "je_2026Q3_inv_8421",
"subject": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR"
}
¶
The value is the integrity-anchor encoded form of the SHA-256 of the JCS [RFC8785] canonical bytes of that object (one line, sorted member names, no whitespace, shown here wrapped for layout only; remove the layout line breaks, adding no characters, to recover the canonical form):¶
{"action":"journal-entries.read","audience":"https://erp.example.com
","mission_id":"msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-","resource":
"je_2026Q3_inv_8421","subject":"user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR"}
¶
request_digest = sha-256:sK12VE_g01AHD2v-O1vsf1Gf_xT_htjX0UN0Oe0dDRU¶
The PEP or executor emits an Execution Evidence Object after the
authorized action's outcome is determined. It records whether the
permitted action was attempted, completed, failed, or suppressed,
linked to the Decision Evidence by decision_id. Emission follows
the runtime profile's class rule: Execution Evidence is required for
the high-consequence classes and for every further class the
deployment claims under the runtime profile's transaction-assurance
tier ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
execution_id:REQUIRED. A string. Unique execution identifier.
ABNF: 1*64( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" ). At least 128 bits of
entropy.¶
decision_id:REQUIRED. A string. The linked Decision Evidence.¶
mission_id:REQUIRED. A string. The Mission id, mirrored from the
linked Decision Evidence for join-key convenience.¶
parameter_digest:CONDITIONAL. A string. MUST be present when the linked Decision Evidence carries one, and MUST match it.¶
outcome:REQUIRED. A string. One of attempted, completed,
failed, or suppressed. suppressed means the action was
permitted but the executor chose not to attempt it (for example, a
kill-switch or a secondary deny).¶
outcome_at:error:CONDITIONAL. A string. Error identifier when outcome is failed or
suppressed, from this closed set: parameter_mismatch (the
executing PEP found the effective parameters differ from those the
permit bound), permit_expired (the permit's validity window had
passed at execution), permit_consumed (re-presentation of an
already-consumed single-use decision identifier), and kill_switch
(execution suppressed by an operator or safety control). A deployment
MAY define additional values, which MUST be collision-resistant names
(a short name within a namespace the deployment controls, following
the Collision-Resistant Name guidance of [RFC7519] Section 4.2) so
they cannot collide with this set or another deployment's.¶
sequence:REQUIRED. An integer. The per-Mission sequence indicator the runtime
profile requires of every record, so the execution stream has a
verifiable order and gaps are detectable. MUST be zero or greater. It
is scoped to emitter per (Mission, emitter) as Decision Evidence
defines (Section 7).¶
emitter:REQUIRED. An object. The identity of the PEP or executor that emitted
and signed this record, in the form Decision Evidence defines
(Section 7), with role pep or executor. A
verifier MUST bind the emitter's signing key to the enforcement scope
and audience the record serves (Section 7.3).¶
hop_reference:OPTIONAL. An object, in the form Decision Evidence defines (Section 7). Present when the linked Decision Evidence carries one.¶
attempted_at:OPTIONAL. An RFC 3339 timestamp. Timing context.¶
completed_at:OPTIONAL. An RFC 3339 timestamp. Timing context.¶
result_summary:OPTIONAL. An object. Minimal action result metadata (for example, affected resource counts). MUST NOT carry user-content payloads.¶
evidence_envelope:REQUIRED. An object. Integrity protection in the
same form as Decision Evidence (Section 7.3),
carrying a format (string, required) and a value (string,
required).¶
An Execution Evidence Object is closed to uncoordinated extension
under the same rule as Decision Evidence: coordinated companion
members (for example, the metering companion's measured_duration)
are permitted, any other extension MUST use a collision-resistant
name, and a consumer MUST ignore members it does not understand.¶
{
"execution_id": "exe_4r9SqLm8tY2pXkV3nR0eF7jB1zN6cQ5w",
"decision_id": "dec_8K2nP4qV9rL3tY6sB1zN0eF7jB",
"mission_id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
"parameter_digest":
"sha-256:WPVi6EnQ7H9Fh-qk9ADxmTg8zruOdVUX1esl-v3TfCI",
"outcome": "completed",
"sequence": 43,
"emitter": { "id": "pep.example.com", "role": "executor" },
"attempted_at": "2026-11-02T08:14:04Z",
"completed_at": "2026-11-02T08:14:05Z",
"outcome_at": "2026-11-02T08:14:05Z",
"result_summary": {
"rows_affected": 1
},
"evidence_envelope": {
"format": "jws-compact",
"value": "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6InBlcC1rZXkt..."
}
}
¶
Decision Evidence and Execution Evidence are linked but distinct. Authorization is not proof that an action occurred; a Decision Evidence record with no corresponding Execution Evidence record indicates the action was not attempted, or that the executor failed to emit evidence.¶
The semantics of parameter binding and the time-of-check to
time-of-use gap are defined by the runtime profile
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). In this binding, the
parameter_digest chain runs from the PDP request through Decision
Evidence to Execution Evidence: if the executed action's effective
parameters differ from those the PDP evaluated, the digest mismatch is
detectable in audit.¶
The PEP MUST NOT emit Execution Evidence that claims an attempted or
completed execution under a parameter_digest that does not match the
linked Decision Evidence. When the executing PEP detects a mismatch
before acting, it MUST refuse the action and emit Execution Evidence
with outcome set to suppressed and error set to
parameter_mismatch, or emit an equivalent PEP-refusal evidence record
under the deployment's runtime evidence mechanism. When values
nonetheless diverge across the chain, the audit consumer MUST classify
the action as parameter-mismatch and treat it as equivalent to an
unauthorized action for compliance purposes.¶
Decision Evidence, Execution Evidence, and Refusal Records MUST be retained for at least the deployment's audit retention window, which the runtime profile requires to be no shorter than the Mission's audit horizon, the term defined in the Mission Record section of [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]. Regulated deployments MAY require longer retention.¶
Consequential actions an agent discovers at runtime, through a Model
Context Protocol tool catalog, an OpenAPI document, a Protected
Resource Metadata-linked catalog, or an equivalent capability source,
identify the source they came from, so a Mission's approved authority
stays bound to concrete tools rather than to bare action names a later
catalog revision could redefine. The runtime profile assigns capability
identity to the approved actions and refuses an invoked identity
outside them ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); this
section gives the concrete binding an AuthZEN deployment presents for
catalog-sourced actions.¶
For MCP tools, this binding composes with the AuthZEN MCP profile's
COAZ mapping [COAZ]. COAZ maps MCP tool definitions and invocation
parameters into the AuthZEN Subject-Action-Resource-Context model; this
profile adds Mission governance, source binding, Mission evidence, and
runtime metering. A Mission-governed MCP deployment MAY use COAZ to
construct the AuthZEN subject, resource, action, and
parameter-bearing context members, but the Mission-specific
context.mission, context.actor, freshness, permit binding, and
evidence requirements in this document still apply.¶
The minimum binding, committed by the validating server at derivation
and presented by the executing component at request time in
context.capability_source, is:¶
{
"tool_id": "mcp://docs.example.com/tools/write_document",
"source_uri": "https://docs.example.com/.well-known/mcp",
"source_digest":
"sha-256:OAbEIh2DTYUVP7DjRhHct4aapsT8PybZq2ILdut9UP0",
"operation_ref": "tools/write_document"
}
¶
tool_id:A string. A stable capability identifier the executing component asserts the action invokes.¶
source_uri:A string. The discovery source the capability was resolved from.¶
source_digest:A string. The integrity-anchor encoded form ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]) over the capability's extracted definition (Section 9.1), recorded at derivation time. At request time it is computed over the current extracted definition, so the PDP's comparison detects a mutated definition.¶
operation_ref:A string. The source-format-specific operation
reference (MCP tool name, OpenAPI operationId, or equivalent).¶
catalog_digest:OPTIONAL. A string. The integrity-anchor encoded form over the exact
retrieved source representation, recorded at derivation time. Its
semantics are strictly stricter than source_digest: when recorded,
any change to the retrieved source refuses, whether or not it touches
the capability. A deployment records it where the whole catalog is
the trust unit.¶
executor:OPTIONAL. A string. An identifier for the executing component that
serves the capability at request time (for example, an MCP server
instance), asserted by the PEP that authenticates it. It is a
request-time fact, not part of the derived authority recorded at
derivation, and is recorded in Decision Evidence when present; it
is never an input to the source_digest or catalog_digest
comparison.
Where the executing component authenticates under an
attested-instance profile
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-client-instance-assertion],
[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-ai-agent-instance]), the deployment
SHOULD carry the attested instance identifier here rather than a
self-chosen label.¶
Rules:¶
The validating server records tool_id, source_uri,
source_digest, operation_ref, and any catalog_digest for every
consequential action sourced from a discovered catalog. These values
are part of the approved Mission's derived authority and are
therefore covered by authority_hash
([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]).¶
The PEP presents tool_id on consequential requests for
catalog-sourced actions. The runtime profile owns the drift
semantics ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); the PDP
applies them through the PDP-side consistency checks
(Section 5), over the per-capability comparison scope of
Section 9.1. This binding adds only the wire
representation: such a refusal is carried as capability_drift,
with its boundary against out_of_authority drawn where the
identifiers are defined (Section 6.4). It
defines no drift rule of its own.¶
Resource policy MAY refuse a catalog-sourced action whose
source_uri or executor is outside the deployment's trusted set.
Such a refusal is a Resource-policy condition, carried as
resource_policy (Section 6.4), not a drift
refusal.¶
Actions not sourced from a discovered catalog (deployment-registered
authorization_details types, first-party operations with stable
identity) do not require this binding.¶
source_digest is computed over the extracted per-capability
definition, not the whole retrieved source, so a revision elsewhere in
a shared catalog does not invalidate a Mission's approved capabilities,
while any mutation of an approved capability's own definition still
refuses. The extraction rule is fixed per source format:¶
For an MCP tool catalog, the extracted definition is the single tool's definition object as retrieved (the member of the catalog's tool list whose name is the capability's), JCS-canonicalized [RFC8785].¶
For an OpenAPI document, the extracted definition is an object with
two members: operation, the operation object operation_ref
identifies, and components, an object carrying, under their
component names, the components of the document the operation
references by name, directly or transitively. The assembled object
is JCS-canonicalized.¶
For another source format, the binding profile in use defines the
extraction rule. A capability whose format has no defined extraction
rule cannot carry a source_digest; the whole-source
catalog_digest remains available for it.¶
For the MCP tool of the minimum binding above, the extracted definition is the tool's definition object:¶
{
"name": "write_document",
"description": "Create or update a document",
"inputSchema": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"path": { "type": "string" },
"content": { "type": "string" }
},
"required": ["path", "content"]
}
}
¶
The JCS canonical bytes are a single line with sorted member names and no whitespace, shown here wrapped for layout only; remove the layout line breaks, adding no characters, to recover the canonical form:¶
{"description":"Create or update a document","inputSchema":{"propert
ies":{"content":{"type":"string"},"path":{"type":"string"}},"require
d":["path","content"],"type":"object"},"name":"write_document"}
¶
source_digest = sha-256:OAbEIh2DTYUVP7DjRhHct4aapsT8PybZq2ILdut9UP0¶
Adding, removing, or renaming another tool in the same catalog leaves this value unchanged; any byte change to this definition changes it.¶
Cross-format canonicalization, signed capability manifests, and media-type negotiation across catalog formats are out of scope ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]); this binding requires only the stable identifier plus source evidence above.¶
The PDP relies on Mission state to decide. The runtime profile defines
the Mission state source, the maximum staleness bound, and the
fail-closed rule ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). This
binding conveys that state and its freshness on the wire through
context.mission.state and context.freshness (Section 5),
using a mode member with one of three values that describe how the
PEP obtained the state:¶
fresh: the PEP consulted the Mission state source synchronously
before the action.¶
cached: the PEP used cached Mission state within the deployment's
staleness bound.¶
event_driven: the PEP relies on event-channel invalidation, but the
cached state remains bounded by the deployment's staleness bound, or
the lease the state carries, exactly as for cached; it is not valid
indefinitely. A missed or delayed invalidation event does not extend
validity, and when the bound elapses without a confirming event the
PEP MUST refresh from a Mission state source rather than continue on
the cache.¶
When freshness cannot be established within the bound, the PDP fails
closed for consequential actions as the runtime profile requires; in
this binding that surfaces as a stale_state denial
(Section 6.4).¶
This binding adds AuthZEN-specific obligations on top of the runtime profile's enforcement contract; an implementation conforms to this binding only for the resources, action classes, and PDPs in the runtime enforcement scope it documents ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]).¶
Each role's obligations are normative in their owning sections; this checklist cites them without restating their mechanics.¶
A PEP conforming to this binding MUST:¶
carry the Mission and actor decision inputs from validated token
claims only, matching the approved entry's resource against
context.audience (Section 5);¶
supply context.parameter_digest and context.capability_source
where required (Section 5.5,
Section 9);¶
enforce the permit lease as Section 6.1 defines;¶
key permit caches on the permit's bound fields and never relay a permit as a bearer grant (Section 6.7); and¶
emit pre-decision Refusal Records as Section 7.2 requires, and Execution Evidence for the classes its emission rule covers, as Section 8 requires.¶
Of these, the permit-lease and Execution Evidence items are the machinery of the runtime profile's transaction-assurance tier ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]): a PEP carries them for the classes that tier covers.¶
A PDP conforming to this binding MUST:¶
refuse an in-scope consequential request that lacks the Mission decision context, and perform the PDP-side consistency checks (Section 5);¶
classify every denial per Section 6.4;¶
return the decision context of Section 6.1, including the permit-lease members; and¶
emit Decision Evidence per Section 7 and Section 7.3.¶
An executor distinct from the requesting PEP MUST enforce the permit
as Section 6.7 and Section 8
require: verify the binding fields from the signed Decision Evidence
rather than trust a relayed decision: true, own the
consumed-identifier store and the lease, and recompute the
parameter_digest immediately before acting, refusing with
parameter_mismatch on divergence.¶
An audit consumer conforming to this binding MUST verify each evidence envelope against the emitter's published keys (Section 12.5) and classify orphaned Decision Evidence and cross-record digest divergence as Section 12 and Section 8 require, never as proof of action.¶
The runtime profile's Security Considerations ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) apply in full: placement and bypass, classification integrity, freshness and consumption honesty, Resource policy authority, TOCTOU and replay, and the limits of a compromised PEP or PDP. This section addresses only threats specific to the AuthZEN binding and the evidence objects.¶
A PDP that serves both Mission-bound and ordinary AuthZEN traffic has
two policy surfaces, and the request selects between them by carrying
context.mission. If an in-scope request that lost its Mission
context (a PEP defect, or a path an attacker can influence) were
evaluated against the non-Mission surface, a generic allow rule would
stand in for the Mission evaluation this binding exists to force. The
consistency requirement of Section 5 refuses such a request
outright; deployments SHOULD additionally alert on in-scope requests
arriving without Mission context, since each one is a PEP defect or a
probe.¶
A deployment that composes with ARAP adds the Access Request Service to its trusted base: it adjudicates requestable denials and issues the approvals the PDP consumes as input. A compromised or misconfigured Access Request Service can auto-approve escalations, so it MUST be trusted, authenticated, and access-controlled like the PDP, and its auto-approval is bounded as above.¶
The denial-reason identifiers and any contributing_constraints are a
decision oracle: an agent can probe them to map authority it does not
hold. The PEP SHOULD minimize the denial detail it relays to the agent;
a generic refusal suffices to stop the action, and the full reason and
contributing constraints belong in evidence, not in the agent-facing
response. To bound probing through the request loop, deployments SHOULD
rate-limit access requests per Mission and surface request provenance to
Approvers, so a compromised agent driving repeated requestable denials
is visible to the humans adjudicating them.¶
Decision Evidence is not proof an action occurred. Implementations MUST emit Execution Evidence to record outcomes, and auditors MUST NOT treat Decision Evidence alone as evidence of action. An audit consumer MUST classify orphaned Decision Evidence (no matching Execution Evidence within the deployment's reconciliation window) as undetermined-outcome or, per deployment policy, as action-attempted; it MUST NOT treat it as proof of action.¶
The evidence_envelope binds each record to the emitting PDP or PEP.
The PDP's jws-compact signing key MUST be resolvable, by the JWS
protected kid, in the PDP's published JWKS so a verifier can check
Decision Evidence independently. The PEP or executor signing key used
for Execution Evidence and Refusal Records MUST be resolvable the same
way through a
deployment-published key set.¶
This profile fixes one concrete discovery convention: the PDP publishes its JWKS at a deployment-published location named in the enforcement scope statement ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]), and the PEP or executor key set is published and named there likewise. The retired-key rule of the issuance profile's key management ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission]) extends to evidence signing keys: a retired signing key MUST remain resolvable in the published key set for at least the evidence retention window, so records signed before a rotation stay verifiable after it. The compromise exception carries over with it: a key known or suspected compromised is published as revoked or marked with a compromise time, per the core rule, and evidence signed under it after that time is unverifiable rather than verified.¶
Implementations MUST reject evidence whose format is unsupported
rather than accepting it unverified.¶
A PDP that evaluates against a materialized view enlarging the
Authority Set's bounds violates the bounded property of
Section 4. authority_hash is the upper
bound; policy_view_id lets the PDP detect that the view it loaded
does not match the Mission the PEP referenced and deny with
view_inconsistent.¶
The PDP endpoint and the audit channels carrying Decision Evidence and Execution Evidence MUST be served over TLS 1.2 or later (TLS 1.3 RECOMMENDED). PEP-to-PDP authentication MUST be mutual, satisfying the integrity and mutual-authentication requirement the runtime profile places on the PEP-PDP channel ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]). Evidence at rest MUST be encrypted per the deployment's data-protection posture.¶
The runtime profile's evidence-privacy guidance ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) applies in full. This section addresses the concrete evidence objects.¶
Decision Evidence, Execution Evidence, and Refusal Records carry the
authenticated
subject, actor chain, resource and action identifiers,
credential-derived correlators, capability-source identifiers,
parameter_digest, and timing. These records are PII sinks and SHOULD
be access-controlled to audit consumers with a legitimate need,
encrypted at rest, and retained per the window of
Section 8.¶
The durable Decision Evidence record MUST NOT contain the raw
parameters object; it carries only parameter_digest and, at most,
parameter-class metadata, consistent with the runtime profile's rule
that raw parameters never appear in the record. Where raw parameters
must be retained for audit, they are held in a separately
access-controlled store keyed by decision_id. When the parameters are
themselves PII, the PEP SHOULD supply only context.parameter_digest
to the PDP, omitting context.parameters, so the PDP evaluates against
parameter-class policy without observing the raw values. The Execution
Evidence result_summary MUST NOT carry user-content payloads.¶
The actor member carries the delegation chain, which MAY reveal
service accounts, client instances, and organizational structure.
Evidence carrying the same Mission id and authority_hash across
resource boundaries can correlate a subject's activity; this is
inherent to the Mission's role as a governance handle. Deployments that
require unlinkability need an additional privacy design outside this
profile.¶
This document requests the following IANA actions.¶
This document registers three media types per [RFC6838].¶
Type name: application¶
Subtype name: mission-decision-evidence+json¶
Required parameters: none¶
Optional parameters: none¶
Encoding considerations: binary; JSON encoded in UTF-8¶
Security considerations: see Section 12¶
Interoperability considerations: see this document¶
Published specification: this document¶
Applications that use this media type: Mission-bound runtime enforcement deployments¶
Fragment identifier considerations: same as for application/json¶
Additional information:¶
Person & email address to contact for further information: Karl McGuinness public@karlmcguinness.com¶
Intended usage: COMMON¶
Restrictions on usage: none¶
Author: IETF¶
Change controller: IETF¶
Type name: application¶
Subtype name: mission-execution-evidence+json¶
Required parameters: none¶
Optional parameters: none¶
Encoding considerations: binary; JSON encoded in UTF-8¶
Security considerations: see Section 12¶
Interoperability considerations: see this document¶
Published specification: this document¶
Applications that use this media type: Mission-bound runtime enforcement deployments¶
Fragment identifier considerations: same as for application/json¶
Additional information:¶
Person & email address to contact for further information: Karl McGuinness public@karlmcguinness.com¶
Intended usage: COMMON¶
Restrictions on usage: none¶
Author: IETF¶
Change controller: IETF¶
Type name: application¶
Subtype name: mission-refusal-record+json¶
Required parameters: none¶
Optional parameters: none¶
Encoding considerations: binary; JSON encoded in UTF-8¶
Security considerations: see Section 12¶
Interoperability considerations: see this document¶
Published specification: this document¶
Applications that use this media type: Mission-bound runtime enforcement deployments¶
Fragment identifier considerations: same as for application/json¶
Additional information:¶
Person & email address to contact for further information: Karl McGuinness public@karlmcguinness.com¶
Intended usage: COMMON¶
Restrictions on usage: none¶
Author: IETF¶
Change controller: IETF¶
This document registers the following in the "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Field Name" registry ([RFC9110]):¶
Field Name: Mission-Decision¶
Status: permanent¶
Reference: this document, Section 6.8¶
Comments: none¶
The context.mission, context.actor, context.credential,
context.parameters, context.parameter_digest,
context.idempotency_key, context.parameter_attributes,
context.audience, context.freshness,
context.external_communication, context.taint,
context.action_approval, and context.capability_source
members carried
inside the AuthZEN request
context object (Section 5) are
AuthZEN extension data and are not registered in an IETF registry.
The response context.decision_id, context.denial_reason,
context.action_class, context.class_source,
context.parameter_digest, context.policy_view_id,
context.permit_expires_at, context.single_use,
context.insufficient_claims, and context.access_request members
(Section 6.1) are likewise AuthZEN extension
data. The Mission-bound token claims this profile consumes are
registered by [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission].¶
This document is the AuthZEN binding of Mission-Bound Runtime Enforcement and builds on the OpenID AuthZEN Authorization API. The author thanks the OpenID AuthZEN community and the Mission-Bound Authorization implementer community for feedback.¶