Vocabulary
Every word this application uses about an agent, and what each one means here. A screen that prints one of these words links to its entry.
The three things this catalogue is about
A listing: release
A versioned build of agent software: artefact, digest, SBOM, tools offered, purpose. Signed by its publisher. It lives at /catalogue/<slug> here and at the publisher's release record. It has a version. It has no keys, no certificate and no identity. Nothing resolves it.
A record in Connect: agent
A governed identity. It lives at /agents/<slug> here and at its entity identifier on the wire. It holds a certificate, roles and marks, and a stranger can resolve it. It has no version. Deploying the same release under two operators gives two of these (Balance Monitor at Tarnbrook Financial Group, Balance Monitor at Quillon Software).
A running process, not a record: instance
One running copy of an agent. It has no address. It runs on a workload host, on a laptop, in a publisher's service. Nobody can go and look it up, so it publishes nothing and nothing resolves it. It proves itself to the attester, which binds its key and publishes one bit for it. Stop an instance and the agent carries on. Withdraw the agent and this catalogue asks the attester to stop every instance of it that the attester knows of.
The test to apply: can anybody reach it?
A thing with an address publishes a signed document at it, so it can be resolved, vouched for and checked by a stranger. That is a federation entity and it gets its own identity. A thing with no address cannot, so it is attested instead.
Why a name is fixed
The entity identifier of every agent in this estate was fixed on first write. The directory refuses to reuse an identifier, including one belonging to a withdrawn agent. A self hosted identity is therefore restored in place, never recreated under a numbered name; a Connect hosted identity's withdrawal is a soft delete and is permanent, so it is never restored and its identifier is never used again.
The words on the evidence screens
entity configuration
A signed document an agent publishes about itself, at its own address. It carries the agent's public keys and what the agent says it is. The signature proves nobody altered the document. It does not prove that anybody vouches for the agent. Read one on the identity screen, or on Inspect a document.
subordinate statement
A signed document one party publishes about another. The Tarnbrook Financial Group authority publishes one about every agent it governs. It carries the agent's keys and the limits on what the agent may ask for. The agent cannot write it, which is why a stranger reads it rather than taking the agent's word. The Trust screen asks for it.
trust mark
A signed note from an authority that says an agent holds one named role. An agent carries one mark for each role it was granted. A platform reads the marks before it accepts the agent. The Trust screen asks the authority whether each mark is still active.
chain
The path from one agent up to the anchor. Every party on the path signs a statement about the party below it. A reader walks the path and checks every signature on it. One broken link fails the whole chain. The Trust screen walks the chain; the identity screen asks the authority to walk it for you.
anchor
The one party a reader trusts before it reads anything else. Every chain ends at an anchor. Two readers can pick different anchors, so one may accept an agent the other refuses. A request that asks for a chain names the anchor as trust_anchor, which is the long value on the identity screen.
policy parameter
One named limit an authority sets on an agent inside the statement it signs. authorization_details_types is one: it lists what the agent may ask a platform to do. A platform reads the parameters before it lets the agent act. The identity screen states each one in words and prints the signed record underneath it.
envelope
Everything an agent is allowed to ask for. Tarnbrook requests an envelope, the authority grants one that is never larger, and a platform accepts only what its own policy allows. The Identities screen reports whether the envelope was granted, which is a different question from whether the identity exists.
attester
The service a running copy proves itself to. A copy has no address, so nobody can look it up, and it is attested instead. The attester publishes one bit for each copy and that bit lasts 60 seconds. The Runtime screen counts the copies the attester reports.