User Spec

Topic

Dynamic Trust and Reputation for Multi-Agent Systems

Goal

Produce a credible IETF-style Internet-Draft for an interoperable way to represent and exchange runtime trust signals about agents, so systems can adapt authorization, routing, or collaboration decisions as agent behavior changes over time.

Intended status

Experimental.

Rationale: the need is clear, but trust scoring models are easy to overclaim and likely need deployment experience before standards-track treatment.

Problem to solve

The analyzer identifies Dynamic Trust and Reputation as a high-severity gap. Current work is dominated by static identity and certificate-style authentication, but long-running agent ecosystems need a way to incorporate runtime behavior, observed failures, successful execution history, and policy violations into ongoing trust decisions.

The draft should address:

how trust-relevant events are represented
how trust assertions or trust updates are shared
how recipients understand freshness, confidence, and scope
how dynamic trust interacts with but does not replace identity and authorization

What must be true in the final draft

The draft distinguishes identity, attestation, authorization, and trust; it must not collapse them into one concept.
Dynamic trust is presented as supplemental runtime evidence, not magic security.
The mechanism is narrow enough to be interoperable and testable.
Security and privacy analysis address manipulation, collusion, replay, reputational poisoning, and unwanted disclosure.
The document remains grounded in observable events and explicit confidence, not vague AI safety rhetoric.

Constraints

scope constraints Do not try to standardize a universal reputation economy or global scoring service. Focus on exchangeable trust signals and their interpretation boundaries.
compatibility constraints Reuse adjacent identity, attestation, and execution-evidence work when possible. Do not redefine base authentication or token exchange.
terminology constraints Separate trust event, trust assertion, confidence, freshness, subject, issuer, and scope. Avoid anthropomorphic language.

Source materials to prioritize

/home/c/projects/ietf-draft-analyzer/data/reports/gaps.md
/home/c/projects/ietf-draft-analyzer/data/reports/holistic-agent-ecosystem-draft-outlines.md
/home/c/projects/ietf-draft-analyzer/data/reports/ideas.md
/home/c/projects/ietf-draft-analyzer/data/reports/overview.md
draft-cosmos-protocol-specification
draft-jiang-seat-dynamic-attestation
draft-aylward-daap-v2
draft-birkholz-verifiable-agent-conversations
relevant WIMSE, RATS, or attestation-adjacent drafts when they help prevent reinvention

Success criteria

A reader can tell what trust-relevant event data must be present and how it is scoped.
A reader can tell how trust assertions expire, how confidence is expressed, and how misuse is limited.
Reviewers can challenge the design on substance rather than on fuzzy terminology or missing threat analysis.
The draft makes clear what decisions dynamic trust can inform and what it must not be trusted to do alone.

Questions for the team

What is the minimum interoperable trust event model?
Should trust updates be absolute assertions, delta adjustments, or both?
How should confidence, issuer scope, and freshness be represented?
What privacy risks arise when sharing negative trust events across domains?

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