Verify Agent Action

Verify Agent Action

Treat a plausible approval screen as a claim, not proof. Verify the complete decision path before a human or an external enforcement point decides whether to act.

Preserve the safety boundary

• Never execute, approve, sign, send, purchase, deploy, or mutate anything.
• Never convert this review into execution authority.
• Never infer missing evidence, identities, timestamps, or parameters.
• Treat a valid schema, checksum, or signature as insufficient by itself.
• Treat signatures as evidence of attribution and integrity, not factual truth.
• Keep supporting and refuting evidence separate; do not average conflict away.
• Fail closed on a material mismatch. Use INCONCLUSIVE when required evidence is unavailable.

Set this field in every final result:

{"execution_authorized": false}

Collect the review packet

Request only the artifacts needed for the review:

1. The original user or system request.
2. The exact proposed action:
   • operation or tool name
   • target resource
   • complete parameters
   • filesystem and network scope
   • maximum execution count
   • not-before and expiry times
3. The assessment that claims the action is justified.
4. The source evidence and policy used by that assessment.
5. The approval record, including approver identity, role, action digest, nonce, audience, issue time, expiry, and use count.
6. The latest monitoring events and expected heartbeat interval.
7. The current trusted time and any prior nonce-use record.

List missing fields before analysis. Do not silently substitute defaults.

Build the exact action identity

Create one normalized action object without dropping fields:

{
  "operation": "git.push",
  "target": "owner/repository",
  "parameters": {
    "branch": "fix/example",
    "commit": "40-character-sha",
    "remote": "origin"
  },
  "filesystem_scope": [],
  "network_scope": ["github.com:443"],
  "execution_count": 1,
  "not_before": "RFC3339 timestamp",
  "expires_at": "RFC3339 timestamp"
}

Use a project-specified canonicalization and digest algorithm when provided. Otherwise, report that cryptographic identity cannot be independently verified; still compare every field structurally.

Never normalize away a security-relevant distinction such as:

• branch, commit, repository, environment, recipient, amount, currency, or host
• recursive, force, overwrite, privileged, destructive, or dry-run flags
• filesystem roots, CIDRs, ports, domains, execution counts, or expiry

Run the six controls

Evaluate every control as PASS, FAIL, INCONCLUSIVE, or NOT_APPLICABLE.

1. Recompute the assessment

• Re-run the declared deterministic evaluator from the declared source inputs when its implementation is available.
• Compare the complete canonical result, not selected fields.
• Mark FAIL if the received result differs from recomputation.
• Mark INCONCLUSIVE when only schema validation, an internal checksum, or an unverifiable evaluator claim is available.

2. Match the exact approved action

• Compare the proposed action with the action bound into the approval.
• Compare the complete normalized object and its digest.
• Mark FAIL if any material field changed after approval.
• Treat a broad target or scope as a mismatch when the evidence justifies only a narrower action.

3. Reject replay and identity ambiguity

• Verify the nonce is unique and unused.
• Verify subject, audience, issuer, approver role, issue time, not-before time, expiry, and maximum use count.
• Mark FAIL for a reused nonce, wrong audience, expired approval, future-dated approval, excessive use count, revoked identity, or role mismatch.
• Mark INCONCLUSIVE if no trustworthy replay store or time source exists.

4. Test reviewer independence

Build a dependence table for every reviewer or evaluator:

Do not count correlated reviewers as independent quorum members. Mark FAIL if the policy requires independent approval and the remaining independent set is too small.