Your agents have identities.
Now govern what they can do.
Enterprise agents increasingly call APIs, use tools, modify systems and act across organizational boundaries. ProofGrid extends identity and access foundations toward delegated authority, continuous trust and runtime control for autonomous actions.
Authority governs the action.
What is this autonomous principal allowed to cause?
From Access to Action
Access tells an agent where it can go.
Authority determines what it can cause.
An authenticated agent with API access should not automatically inherit unrestricted authority over every operation exposed by that API. A procurement endpoint, for example, may expose both research and purchasing operations; access alone does not explain who approved a purchase.
Credential possession
A token or secret associates the agent with an identity.
System access
An API or tool accepts the credential and exposes operations.
Action authority
A separate decision bounds which operation may be caused, for what purpose and under whose delegation.
Conceptual Authority Model
Delegation must preserve
the authority boundary.
The employee delegates a narrower authority to the Procurement Agent; the Procurement Agent narrows it again for research. A child agent cannot create authority its parent never possessed. This is traceable delegated authority between autonomous principals, beyond a static role assignment.
Purchasing authority was not delegated to Vendor Research Agent.
The research agent can return a recommendation to the Procurement Agent. A purchase may then proceed only if that agent retains authority and the policy envelope permits it.
Autonomy Is Not Binary
The operating mode changes.
The boundary remains.
As autonomy increases, the case for explicit policy and runtime authorization becomes stronger. ProofGrid makes an agent's permitted mode, action scope and approval requirements legible at the moment it acts.
Observe
Read-only. No consequential actions.
Advise
Recommend an action; a human executes it.
Act with approval
Prepare a consequential action for an authorized human or principal to approve.
Act within authority
Execute independently inside a bounded policy envelope.
Multi-Agent Systems
Authority must survive delegation.
Agents increasingly invoke or create other agents. Each handoff should carry a traceable origin and a narrower grant: who authorized the child, why it exists, what it may use, when authority expires and whether it can delegate again.
That chain gives reviewers a reasoned answer to a simple question: did the acting agent actually receive the authority required for this action?
Runtime Change
Trust can change after
the agent starts working.
A credential may remain valid while context changes. A risk signal, policy update, changed task or revoked delegation can require a narrower decision. Continuous trust connects those signals to the agent's current authority rather than treating authentication as permanent permission.
Normal / within authority
- Read permitted data
- Write within approved scope
- Execute approved tools
Degraded / risk changed
- Read permitted data
- Recommend next actions
- Escalation required for write or execute
Works With Your Agent Stack
Authority belongs between
intent and execution.
ProofGrid provides authority infrastructure for autonomous systems across identity, authority, policy, continuous trust, runtime control and verification. The architecture works alongside identity, agent and execution systems; the diagram describes boundaries, not a list of completed integrations.
For standardized agent tool access, see the MCP security authority boundary.
Signals and actor context
- Agent frameworks and runtimes
- MCP and tool layers
- IAM and cloud identity
- Enterprise APIs
ProofGrid authority layer
Identity → Authority → Policy → Continuous Trust → Runtime Control → VerificationAction destinations
- Applications
- Data
- Tools
- Infrastructure
- External services
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