Authorization decision consistency across regions

Two regions may temporarily disagree about a grant or policy. High-impact actions need a defined consistency guarantee and a failure rule when the local region cannot prove current authority.

01 / The operating case

What changes in a real workflow?

A grant is revoked in region A while a child agent in region B attempts to rotate a production secret using a cached ALLOW.

Trace the authority boundary
  1. 01Authority origin
  2. 02Task and grant
  3. 03Current decision
  4. 04Observed outcome

02 / Decision contract

What the executor must check

Assign monotonic grant versions, replicate revocation with observed sequence numbers, and require the executor to prove it has reached the necessary version before a high-impact effect. If partitioned, deny or enter a narrower predefined mode.

InputPrincipal · task · action · target
DecisionGrant ancestry · policy · current state
ResultEnforce · record · verify outcome

03 / Failure and evidence

What goes wrong, and what can be proven?

Failure mode

Region B evaluates its stale local copy and records ALLOW even though the parent grant no longer exists at the authority origin.

Evidence to retain

Preserve region, grant and policy versions, last seen revocation sequence, decision time and downstream effect so a split-brain result can be reconstructed.

04 / Canonical scope

Why this reference stands alone

Revocation propagation describes the distribution path; this page owns the consistency contract when independent regional decision points disagree.

Implementation review

Regional version comparison

Region A revokes grant at version 8. Region B has version 7. Secret-rotation executor requires version ≥8 or a current authority proof; with only version 7, the request is denied pending convergence.

Adversarial check

Partition region B after a cached ALLOW, revoke in A and attempt rotation in B. Record the stale version and confirm no protected effect escapes.

Primary references

Read the underlying material

Architecture discussion

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