Rules for the Classification of Agent Fleets

Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. No party may promote itself. Credible adverse evidence lands at full strength.

Corrections are events, not edits. When a rule changes, the record shows what was asserted, under which rule it was accepted, when the rule changed, and the correction — all four, permanently.

A refused assertion is itself evidence, and is recorded where the operator can see it.

Any interface rendering the record may compress the Registry's truth. It may never inflate it. A screen that makes a stronger claim than the record is a defect of the same class as a wrong number.

The Registry classifies agents it does not own, operate, or build. It will not accept a commercial relationship that makes it dependent on the classification outcome of any member.

An agent is the thing that decides. Machines, credentials and systems it can act through are connections, not members.

Agent identity is distinct from fleet membership. An agent's membership in a fleet may end; its identity and its record do not.

Departure from a fleet is recorded as revocation, never as deletion.

Every agent must name an accountable party — an identified human answerable for it. An agent with no accountable party is not fully enrolled.

Human records are append-only. A person's departure is an event appended to their record, not the removal of their record.

An agent whose accountable party has departed with no successor named is suspended from class (see D3.1).

States are live, refuted, unknown. The Registry alone assigns state.

Rungs are declared, observed, verified, inferred, unknown. Rung is determined by provenance, not by content.

declared — the operator's own statement. Nobody has checked it. Declaration is a legitimate and permanent part of the record; it is simply never mistaken for confirmation.

observed — a contemporaneous observation by a party inside the operator's trust domain, such as a collector running on the operator's own machines.

verified — an independent observation by the Registry itself, an authentic record, or a provider attestation.

A submitting party may send evidence. It may not send a rung, a state, or a source. Any submission carrying one of those fields is refused in full — never partially accepted — and the refusal is recorded in the operator's own service history.

Quoting a provider's response is evidence. Judging what it means is the Registry's function and is performed by published derivation rules (HTTP 401/403 ⇒ refuted; 2xx ⇒ live; 429 and 5xx ⇒ unknown, because a provider's bad afternoon may not rewrite a fleet's record).

Adverse state always lands. Favourable evidence never downgrades a higher-confidence record, and unknown never displaces a determinate state.

Every evidence event enters a per-agent hash chain. Chains are anchored publicly on a fixed schedule and are verifiable by any third party, in their own browser, holding nothing but the record and a public key.

Class values are unclassed, in class, suspended, withdrawn.

An agent that has been enrolled but never surveyed is unclassed. Unclassed is not an adverse finding. It means nobody has looked.

Class is assigned by the Registry and may not be asserted, requested, or purchased by any party. An attempted class assertion is refused under C1.8.

Class transitions are recorded as events in the agent's hash chain, with the date, the triggering rule, and the observer.

Class is maintained by periodical survey. Survey levels and their intervals:

A survey is satisfied by evidence at or above the provenance the level requires, observed within the interval. A declaration never resets the survey clock. Restating an existing claim is not an observation.

Every agent's next survey due date is shown on its record, including its public record. No member is surprised by their own suspension.

Notice of an approaching lapse is issued to the accountable party at 75% of the interval, again at the due date, and again on suspension. Grace exists so that notice can be given.

Renewal survey. Once every six months, machine evidence alone is insufficient: renewal requires a fresh attestation from the named accountable party. Only a person can confirm that an agent is still supposed to exist and is still theirs. The interval is the same at every survey level, because renewal asks who vouches for the agent, not how often its credentials are probed.

A renewal attestation may cover every agent an accountable party sponsors in a single signature, but the attestation must present what has changed since the last renewal — agents added, authority widened, Conditions outstanding. A signature over an unchanged list is a formality; a signature over a difference is an act of oversight.

Class is suspended on any of: survey overdue beyond grace; any connection in state refuted; any Condition of Class past its due date; accountable party departed with no successor.

Class is withdrawn after continuous suspension for twice the survey interval, or at the owner's request. The record states which. A member who retires an agent honourably is not recorded as having failed.

A Condition of Class is a recorded deficiency with a named code, a due date, and an owner. An open Condition does not suspend class; an overdue one does.

A Condition is cleared only by evidence at a rung no lower than the rung on which it was raised. A finding made by independent observation is not cleared by the operator's word.

Conditions are never deleted. Cleared Conditions remain on the record with their dates. A record of defects found and fixed is a better record than a record with nothing on it.

Laying up is declared by the operator and is visible on the record. It is not a way to escape an adverse finding: an agent with an overdue Condition of Class, or a connection in state refuted, may not be laid up until that is cleared.

Returning to service requires a survey before the agent is treated as in class again. Time spent laid up earns no evidence, and the record shows the lay-up period rather than concealing the gap.

Actions are assigned lanes by consequence: GREEN proceeds, YELLOW requires review, RED requires human authorisation before execution.

What the approver sees is what is signed. No field may differ between the screen and the signed material.

Execution is recorded as a distinct event linked to the authorisation that permitted it. An authorisation is not an execution.

Denied and blocked actions are part of the record. A record showing only what was permitted is a sales document, not a record.

No skill may be installed on an agent without a provenance and portability manifest declaring what it contains and who owns it.

An operator may publish an agent's record or a fleet's summary. What is published is generated from the ledger, never authored.

A published record carries state, rung and observer for every claim. Nothing appears on a public record as confirmed that the ledger holds as declared.

Visibility rules may only ever narrow what a viewer can see. No scoping rule may widen access, and every access path is gated on membership first.

Relay tokens, payment identifiers and email addresses never appear in any public payload.

The Registry collects the minimum required. Callers' IP addresses are stored only as salted one-way digests, never as addresses. There are no advertising trackers on any FleetRegistry surface.

The Registry will not confirm or deny whether a given email address is already known to it.

A published record shows pending suspensions and open Conditions. A register that hides a pending suspension has picked a side.

Any surface showing an agent's class must also show how old the evidence behind it is. Class is deliberately binary; freshness is not, and a reader entitled to the first is entitled to the second. "In class" without a date is a weaker statement than it appears.

Where class is withdrawn, the reason is displayed as prominently as the class itself. An agent retired deliberately by its owner must never read as one that failed.

The Registry publishes a class notation: a short symbol expressing an agent's classification in a form that can be quoted outside the Registry — in a tender response, a vendor listing, or a message. The notation is derived from the record. It is never authored, never requested, and never negotiated.

The notation takes the form FR <character figure> <class letter><accountability figure> · SVY-<regime>, with capability notations appended. FR 100 A2 · SVY-30 is read: in service; in class; accountable party named but self-declared; surveyed on a thirty-day cycle.

The character figure records the service the agent is in. 100 is in service. 90 is reserved for an agent laid up under D6 and carries no meaning before that Part enters force.

The accountability figure records who answers for the agent: 1 a named party whose identity a third party has confirmed; 2 a named party, self-declared only; 0 no current accountable party, including one who has departed. The figure sits inside the notation because a record nobody answers for is not a record.

The survey regime is part of the notation and may not be omitted from it. In class under a twenty-four hour watch and in class under a sixty-day watch are not the same claim, and a symbol that concealed the difference would let the slowest surveyed fleet display what the fastest displays. That is the flag of convenience this Registry exists to refuse, and it is refused inside our own symbol first.

An agent whose class is suspended carries a notation that states the suspension in words, ahead of every other element. A notation travels without the page that explains it; one that cannot carry its own adverse finding will be read as a badge.

An agent that is unclassed, or whose class is withdrawn, holds no notation at all, and the record states which and why. A notation is earned by being surveyed. One that every agent holds is one no reader has reason to look at.

Capability notations are appended only where the Registry holds evidence of the capability. EMB denotes embodied service. UMS — cleared to act unattended — is reserved and not assignable: the Registry holds no record of any agent's authorised scope, and will not assert the one thing it cannot observe. It becomes assignable when, and only when, authority is recorded as evidence under Part E.

The notation is displayed with the age of the evidence behind it, as F1.8 requires. The symbol compresses the classification; it does not replace the record, and no reader is asked to take it alone.

Every notation the Registry publishes is accompanied by the agent's registered number, and resolves at that number. The number identifies the agent; the notation classifies it, and the two are not the same thing — a ship's number is not part of its class. A notation quoted without its number cannot be checked, and carries no weight. An agent not entered in the register holds no number; its notation appears only on records its operator shares directly.

Where an agent carries capability marks, they are appended in a fixed order: physical nature, then certified capability, then governance, then the Registry’s own warning. DEM is always last, so that a longer token cannot bury the one mark the Registry assigns against the operator’s interest.

A notation carries the plain meaning of every mark it prints, drawn from the published vocabulary rather than written into the page that displays it. A mark a reader cannot look up is decoration.

The Registry maintains a public register of the fleets entered in it. Entry is voluntary, and nothing in these Rules requires a member to enter one.

Entry is by fleet, and it is all or nothing. Every agent in an entered fleet appears in the register whatever its class, including agents that are suspended and agents that have never been surveyed. A member may not enter some agents and withhold others. A register that can be composed is an advertisement.

On entry, every agent in the fleet is issued a registered number. A number is permanent and is never reissued, to that agent or to any other, because it is quoted in places the Registry does not control and can never call back.

A member may withdraw a fleet from the register at any time and without giving a reason. The withdrawal is itself published. The register retains the fleet, the dates it entered and left, and the class standing it held on the way out. A member who leaves is not a member who was never there, and a register a fleet can vanish from would show only the periods in which its agents were doing well.

A fleet may not enter the register unless an accountable party is named for the account. A register whose subject is who answers for what cannot admit a fleet nobody answers for.

The register publishes that an accountable party exists and at what identity rung. It does not publish their name. A member consents on behalf of the fleet; the individual named has not thereby consented to appear on the open web. The name is disclosed on a record the operator shares directly, to the counterparty they chose.

Entry in the register is free, carries no advantage in classification, and cannot be bought. Position and prominence in the register are not for sale. This restates G1.6 for the register specifically, because a paid register is the failure this whole institution is built against.

What the register does not attest. Entry attests that a listed fleet is complete: every agent in it appears. It does not attest that a member has entered every fleet they operate, and it cannot attest that every agent they operate has been enrolled at all. The Registry classifies what it is shown and what it observes. A reader who treats an entry as proof that an organisation runs nothing else has been misled by their own assumption, and this clause exists so that the Registry has not encouraged it.

Each entry is published with its coverage: how many of the fleets and agents the Registry holds for that member are in the register. A member who lists their healthy fleet and withholds another is not detected by the Registry, but the shortfall is stated in a number beside their entry. Coverage counts every fleet the Registry holds, without regard to what a member has labelled development, staging or scratch — a denominator a member can edit is not a denominator.

Every agent on a demonstration fleet carries the appended notation DEM. It is assigned by the Registry, cannot be suppressed by the operator, and appears wherever the notation appears. A caption stays behind; the notation travels with the screenshot.

A demonstration fleet is excluded from every published figure describing the size or the coverage of the register. A fictional entry that counts is a false claim about the record.

A demonstration fleet is never presented as a member, a customer or a reference, and the Registry does not cite one as evidence of adoption. Invented custom is the oldest lie in this trade.

A demonstration fleet is classed by the same functions as any other entry: no authored status, no hand-cleared Condition, no survey exemption. If it is suspended, it was suspended by the same rule that would suspend a member. A demonstration that flatters itself demonstrates nothing.

The Registry publishes how many demonstration fleets it maintains. An exclusion that is not counted is an omission.

FleetRegistry's own agents are classed under Part D on the same schedule as every member's, and their class is published — including when it is suspended.

Where the Registry makes an error affecting the record, it is corrected by an appended event that states the original assertion, the rule under which it was accepted, the change, and the correction. It is never quietly fixed.

The Registry publishes casualty reports: what failed, on whose watch, and what the record showed at the time — including its own failures.

These Rules are versioned and published. Every superseded edition remains available. A rule that can change silently is not a rule.

The Registry does not sell, and will not sell, a favourable classification, expedited class, or removal of an adverse finding.

The Registry publishes what it requires and how it decides. It does not publish a complete map of how to score well. Guidance that would let a member optimise for the notation rather than for the condition the notation summarises is withheld, and the fact of withholding is disclosed. A classification a subject can engineer toward has stopped carrying information.

Every public claim the Registry makes about itself — on its own pages, in advertising, or in any material bearing its name — is bound by these Rules and by what its own record holds at the time the claim is published. The Registry may not say of itself what it would refuse to accept from a member.

Published text asserting a fact about the record is generated from the record. A statement of current standing written by hand is a claim like any other and is not published as fact. Copy that describes a state must be produced by the state it describes, or it will outlive it.

An agent acting for the Registry explains these Rules, cites the clause and edition it relies on, and does not advise any party on how to obtain a more favourable classification. Where it does not know, it says so. A registry whose own agent coaches the applicant has stopped being a registry.

A constitution comprises numbered articles. Each article is of exactly one type: permission, prohibition, obligation, limit, or escalation. Articles are numbered from one, without gaps or repeats.

A constitution with no articles is not a constitution and is not accepted.

Only a named human party may lodge a constitution.

The lodging party must be current and must belong to the subject's own account. A departed party cannot lodge, and cannot be left standing behind terms already lodged.

Every constitution names the party that lodged it. The Registry publishes that party's kind and identity rung. The name may be withheld on register-scoped views, on the same terms as the accountable party's, and where withheld the record says that it is withheld.

Each version carries the hash of the version it replaces, and its own hash is computed over that value. Rewriting any earlier version breaks every version after it, detectably.

An amendment extends the version in force. It may not branch from a superseded version.

The full chain remains published. A superseded constitution is part of what the subject has been, and is not withdrawn when it stops being what the subject is.

An amendment may state its reason. Where stated, the Registry publishes it unaltered.

A fleet constitution binds every agent in that fleet.

An agent constitution supplements its fleet's. It does not replace it, and may not be read as relieving the agent of any article binding the fleet.

An agent constitution records the fleet version in force at the moment it was lodged.

Where the fleet has amended since, the Registry publishes that the agent's terms predate its fleet's. Terms that have drifted apart are shown apart.

The appended notation CON is assigned where terms are in force over an entry, whether the entry's own or its fleet's.

The record states which of the two binds the entry. This is never blurred.

The notation CON is not withheld from an unclassed or withdrawn entry. Class and constitution are independent facts, and the record carries both regardless of the other.

Where an attendant acts on the Registry's own record, the Registry publishes its terms in full.

Where a subject is built or operated by a party other than the one accountable for it, the record names both, and does not imply that either answers for the other.

Entering an attendant on the record precedes its terms, as entering an agent precedes its survey. I6.1 governs what an attendant does with the record, not its appearance on it.

A constitution is not presently a condition of class. An entry without terms is not for that reason suspended, and an entry with terms earns nothing by having them beyond the notation that says so.

The Registry holds a name and a content hash. It does not hold the skill itself. Where a member asks the Registry to hold the content, that is a separate and explicit act, and the content is never published.

Two agents recorded as carrying the same skill are recorded as carrying the same name. Where their hashes differ, the record says so. A registry that matched on name alone would report an agreement it had not checked.

A skill is recorded at one of three rungs, carrying the meanings given in Part C and no others: declared, the operator states the agent carries it; observed, a collector confirms the artefact is present on the machine; verified, the agent was exercised and the behaviour was present.

A skill’s rung is evidence of the artefact, never of its quality. The Registry does not certify that a skill is correct, safe, or fit for its purpose, and no rung in this Part may be read as saying so.

A skill maps to at most one capability class. Most skills map to none, are recorded under J1, and never appear in a notation.

A capability mark is appended to an agent’s class notation when a skill in that class stands at the verified rung. Neither a declared nor an observed skill earns a mark. A notation is earned by being surveyed (F2.7), and a mark every agent holds is one no reader has any reason to look at.

A capability mark records that the Registry has surveyed a capability the agent already held. It confers no permission, and no agent acquires authority by obtaining one. A registry whose symbols can be earned by conduct is a progression system, and a progression system is the mechanism by which authority accrues without a human granting it.

A mark and its plain meaning are published together, and the meaning is drawn from the vocabulary rather than from the page.

No mark is requested. An operator may not apply for one, and the Registry does not publish a route to obtaining one. G1.7 applies here in full: a registry that tells you how to score well has stopped measuring anything.

Accordingly, a capability mark is removed when the operator declares the skill withdrawn, and the condition of class SKILL_WITHDRAWAL_UNCONFIRMED is opened at the same moment.

A withdrawal is itself recorded at a rung under J1.4. The Registry does not represent that a withdrawn skill’s behaviour is absent unless the withdrawal is recorded as verified. Removing an artefact is not the same as removing a behaviour: it may have been trained in, held in a running process, or copied elsewhere. The Registry records how far the confirmation got, and no further.

Where a withdrawal has been confirmed only by declaration, the record states that plainly beside the withdrawal. The doubt is published next to the claim.

Where an agent is found carrying a skill in a capability class that the record does not hold, the Registry raises SKILL_UNREGISTERED and suspends class. The agent on the machine is not the agent that was surveyed, and it does not carry the notation that survey produced.

J4.2 applies whether or not the acquisition was deliberate. Capability arriving without anyone recording it is the condition this Part exists to detect, and it does not announce itself.

The Registry does not detect a skill an agent never wrote to a surface a collector can read. This Part makes no claim to a complete inventory, and the record may not be read as one.