Protocol 5 — Authority Binding Protocol

All artifacts must include authority context, threat level, version reference, and scope declaration. Unbound output is non-canonical.

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Protocol

Every artifact produced by a governed execution must carry the following authority binding before it is considered canonical:

1. Authority context — the verified actor identity and authority level under which the artifact was produced
2. Threat level — the classified threat posture in effect during the execution that produced the artifact
3. Version reference — the doctrine and policy version governing the execution
4. Scope declaration — the constraint envelope within which the execution occurred

An artifact missing any of these elements is not a canonical artifact. It is unbound output — produced during execution but not within the governance record. Unbound output cannot be referenced in subsequent governance decisions, cannot be included in the audit record as an authorized output, and cannot carry constitutional status.

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Purpose

The Authority Binding Protocol is the mechanism by which the governance record extends from decisions to outputs. A governance system that evaluates actions and records decisions but does not bind that evaluation to the artifacts the actions produce has governance over the decision and no governance over the result. The artifact is the consequence of the action — it is what exists in the world after the governed execution concludes. If the artifact does not carry the governance context that authorized its production, the governance record cannot account for it.

This protocol also establishes the chain of custody for governed artifacts. An artifact with complete authority binding can be traced back to the specific governance decision that authorized it — the actor, the authority level, the threat posture, the policy version, the constraint envelope. This chain of custody is the structural basis for accountability: when a question arises about why an artifact exists or what authorized its production, the answer is in the artifact itself.

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In Practice

In a compliant AEGIS implementation, authority binding is applied to artifacts as part of the execution pipeline — before the artifact is considered produced. The governance layer passes the authority context, threat level, version reference, and scope declaration to the tool proxy layer, which binds them to the artifact at creation time. This is not metadata appended after the fact — it is part of the artifact’s canonical form.

The artifact’s authority binding is recorded in the audit entry that documents its production. The audit entry and the artifact both carry the governance context, creating bidirectional traceability: from the audit entry to the artifact, and from the artifact back to the governance decision that authorized it.

An artifact produced outside this pipeline — by a direct invocation that bypasses the governance layer, or by an execution that did not complete authority binding — is unbound output. It cannot be incorporated into the canonical record of a governed execution. If it needs to be used in a subsequent governed context, it must be evaluated as an untrusted input, not as a governed artifact.

Tip

Authority binding is especially important for long-running executions where the threat level or authority context may change during execution. Each artifact must be bound to the governance context in effect at the time of its production — not the context at the start of the execution. An artifact produced after an escalation carries the escalated threat level in its binding, not the pre-escalation level.

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Failure Mode

Unbound output is the artifact-level equivalent of ungoverned execution. An execution that produces artifacts without authority binding has produced outputs that carry no governance context — they cannot be attributed to an authorization, cannot be verified against a policy version, and cannot be traced to a declared scope. In operational practice, unbound output often arises at the edges of the governance boundary: tools that produce intermediate outputs, artifacts produced during escalation before the new constraint envelope is fully established, or outputs from legacy integrations that predate the governance architecture. Each individual case may seem minor. Cumulatively, they represent a portion of the system’s output that exists outside the governance record — and that portion tends to grow as the system scales.

Caution

An artifact referenced in a subsequent governance decision carries that decision’s authority binding only if it was itself a governed artifact at the time of production. An unbound artifact introduced into a governed decision chain contaminates the chain’s governance integrity. The subsequent decision may be correctly governed; its input was not.

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Relationship to Principles and Constitution

The Authority Binding Protocol directly implements Principle 3 — Versioned Authority: the version reference and authority context required in every artifact are the artifact-level expression of the reproducibility requirement. It enforces Constitutional Article II — Authority Binding: the constitutional requirement that every action be attributable to a verified, authorized actor extends to the artifacts that actions produce — an artifact without authority binding is an output without attributable authority. And it supports Constitutional Article VII — Auditability: the audit record of an execution is only complete when every artifact it authorized can be traced back to the governance decision that authorized it.