01 / The operating case
What changes in a real workflow?
A coordinator can read ten records and delegates one record to a child, which then requests a full database export.
- 01Origin grant
- 02Parent agent
- 03Narrow child grant
- 04Action boundary
02 / Decision contract
What the executor must check
Intersect child operations, resources, duration and budget with the parent; reject an incomparable or expanded grant.
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
A copied parent credential or union of scopes creates new effective authority.
Evidence to retain
Record the parent-child scope comparison, rejected expansion and attempted export.
04 / Canonical scope
Why this reference stands alone
Sub-agent permissions defines a grant; narrowing proves the subset invariant across generations.
Technical artifact
Compare every scope dimension
parent: read invoices I-1..I-9, 30 minutes, no onward delegation child proposal: read invoices I-1..I-10, 10 minutes resource subset: false → DENY shorter lifetime does not compensate for a broader resource set
Run the denial test
Make one dimension narrower and another broader. The delegation must fail rather than using a weighted score of the two differences.
Primary references