01 / The operating case
What changes in a real workflow?
A finance agent asks to release an $8,400 payment. Its runtime knows the task but the payment API knows the payee and account state. A decision without both sets of facts would be incomplete.
- 01Authority origin
- 02Task and grant
- 03Current decision
- 04Observed outcome
02 / Decision contract
What the executor must check
Normalize the operation, target and amount before asking for a decision. Bind the result to the requesting principal, originating grant, policy version and short validity window. The payment executor must reject a call whose parameters differ from the evaluated request.
03 / Failure and evidence
What goes wrong, and what can be proven?
The policy engine returns ALLOW on a broad “payments” resource while the executor releases to a different payee or after the parent grant is revoked.
Record the evaluated subject/action/resource/context, policy version, decision ID and reason; correlate with the actual payment attempt and settlement state.
04 / Canonical scope
Why this reference stands alone
The PEP reference owns where the result is enforced. This page owns the PDP input contract, evaluation responsibility and decision freshness.
Implementation review / distinct boundary
A decision request is a contract, not a role lookup.
AuthZEN standardizes communication between a policy enforcement point and a policy decision point using subject, action, resource and context. An agent workflow adds a practical modeling question: which trusted task and delegation facts become subject or context, and which normalized argument values affect the resource? Choose that mapping before writing policy. A PDP should not infer a payee from an agent’s narrative when the payment API can supply the actual payee.
subject: verified agent + originating task action: payment.release resource: account A / invoice I-42 context: payee, amount, grant, policy version result: DENY | ALLOW + request digest + expiry
Input integrity
Obtain identity and grant references from trusted infrastructure; normalize amount and target after tool selection.
Decision binding
Tie the result to request digest, policy version and validity interval; reject execution on a changed digest.
PDP availability
State whether an unavailable or partial PDP response denies the write, escalates, or permits a separately scoped read.
Source context: primary specification or guidance ↗. The worked test and mapping are ProofGrid analysis.
Continue with the runtime authorization library for neighboring decision and execution questions.
Primary references