Re: AIW #3 (Nov 6, Mountain View) — two proposed topics for the opening circle, and a request

There are other projects in this space, too.  One of them is
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-helixar-hdp-agentic-delegation/.

--------------
Alan Karp


On Tue, Oct 27, 2026 at 5:13 AM Abisheak P <abisheakp197@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Xinghua,
>
> I completely agree with your Topic 2 regarding revocable, auditable
> authority for agent chains. I'm the founder of NTI (Neutral Trust
> Infrastructure), a W3C participant.
>
> We actually have a working implementation for this. We use Merkle-chained
> proofs and Dilithium5 signatures to cryptographically bind execution-time
> consent to tool calls, preventing agents from exceeding their mandate.
>
> If someone is attending AIW in person and raises this, please point them
> to our live leaderboard (https://nti-leaderboard.vercel.app). I would
> love to collaborate with you on pushing this as the standard.
>
> Best,
> Abisheak
>
> On Tue, 27 Oct, 2026, 12:23 pm Steven Zhao, <zhaoxinghua07@126.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm Xinghua Zhao, an independent researcher working on lifecycle
>> governance of delegated agents — provenance, scope boundaries and
>> revocation (ORCID 0009-0001-0512-1237). I've been following this CG's work
>> on agent discovery, identification and collaboration protocols.
>>
>> Next week (November 6), Agentic Internet Workshop #3 takes place at the
>> Computer History Museum in Mountain View — the open-space event in the IIW
>> tradition, where people building MCP / A2A / UCP / AP2 and the adjacent W3C
>> / IETF / OIDF / DIF work meet in person. I can't attend (I'm based in
>> Beijing), so I'd like to propose two topics through this list, and to ask a
>> favor: if anyone on this list is attending in person, would you be willing
>> to raise them in the opening circle?
>>
>> **Topic 1 — Identity and delegation chains across MCP and A2A: aligning
>> W3C, IETF and OIDF work.**
>> The AIW topics page identifies delegation and authorization as its
>> largest cluster: how authority passes from humans or organizations to
>> agents and stays bounded, revocable and auditable. My interest is where the
>> "each hop individually compliant, but the whole chain exceeding its
>> mandate" problem actually sits in the stack, and how the tracks converge or
>> diverge: this CG and the Agent Identity Registry / Memory Interop groups on
>> the W3C side; CATALIST, the OAuth-on-behalf-of-user and GNAP-based
>> delegation drafts, DAWN and webbotauth on the IETF side; and AIIM on the
>> OIDF side. A shared vocabulary for delegation chains that cross MCP and A2A
>> — and for what a revocation boundary looks like at each hop — would be the
>> outcome I'd hope for.
>>
>> **Topic 2 — Revocable, auditable authority for agent chains:
>> machine-speed, execution-time consent.**
>> Long-running agent chains accumulate authority far beyond the moment of
>> consent. The questions I'd bring: where do execution-time consent
>> checkpoints belong (MCP tool calls, A2A handoffs); what audit logs and
>> telemetry must capture to make delegation auditable across protocol
>> boundaries; and how a human — or a policy layer — retains the ability to
>> pause, halt and revoke a running agent, including when intent drifts from
>> the original mandate.
>>
>> I'd be glad to have notes from these sessions folded into the public Book
>> of Proceedings, and to follow up with authors whose work touches agent
>> identity and authorization afterward.
>>
>> If you're attending AIW #3 and happy to raise either topic on my behalf,
>> please reply here or off-list — much appreciated.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Xinghua Zhao
>> Independent researcher (SynomosAI initiative)
>> ORCID: 0009-0001-0512-1237
>>
>> [Disclosure: drafting of this message was assisted by AI; all positions
>> reviewed and approved by me.]
>>
>