ARPA Internet-Draft -04 Baseline Review

Status: governed revision-control artifact
Tracking issue: #65
Published baseline: draft-sankarshan-agent-registry-protocol-03 (28 September 2026)
Current ARPA source baseline: Candidate v0.10.0 + ARPA-CAND-PP-04
Target: draft-sankarshan-agent-registry-protocol-04

Purpose

Revision -04 is an interoperability and security-hardening revision over immutable published -03. It promotes only changes with a demonstrated wire, HTTP, security, or conformance need.

Finding disposition

  • F01: accepted, explicit Candidate↔IETF field mapping; potentially breaking.
  • F02: accepted as clarification; core values remain document-defined and extensions collision-resistant; no new centralized IANA value registries in -04.
  • F03: deferred as repository-hardening; publication-state automation is useful but not required for protocol correctness.
  • F04: accepted as explicit tabulated/prose contracts plus version-pinned machine evidence; no normative JSON Schema appendix in -04.
  • F06: accepted; Authority Evaluation Result object made explicit.
  • F07: accepted; only allow/allow_with_conditions are affirmative.
  • F08: accepted; deterministic fail-safe multi-dimensional status composition.
  • F09: accepted; ABNF/equality/normalization defined; Permanent registration posture retained.
  • F10: accepted; RFC 8785 default for JSON proof inputs when no proof profile overrides it.
  • F11: accepted; protocol-visible freshness and cache bound.
  • F12: accepted; role-to-positive/negative conformance matrix required.
  • F14: accepted as discoverable profile bound; no universal skew constant.
  • F16: accepted; core defines no universal idempotency key, profiles may.
  • F17: accepted; PUT creates historical version, preserves identity, requires precondition, prevents omission-based widening.
  • F18: accepted for advertised event endpoints; ordering/checkpoint/gap/resync contract required.
  • F19: accepted; default-deny write authorization with discoverable policy.
  • F20: accepted as cut-time reference validation gate.
  • F21: accepted; critical becomes the single normative extension term.
  • F22: accepted; concrete SSRF/dereference safeguards.
  • F23: accepted editorially by using a revision-04 hardening section without adding further ordinal layering to base prose.
  • F24: accepted; core vs profile HTTP operation surface clarified.
  • F25: accepted; well-known registry metadata discovery separated from agent search.
  • F26: substantively closed in -03; retained in -04 contract through explicit Authority Evaluation/parent-link language.
  • F27: accepted at cut; front matter/keywords reviewed without gratuitous churn.
  • F28: process-only; no status downgrade. Implementation evidence remains informative and version-pinned.

Regression-only F05, F13 and F15 remain closed.

Compatibility

Potentially breaking: field-name ambiguity closure, Authority Evaluation Result location, identifier equality rules, PUT replacement semantics, write-authorization default-deny.

All other accepted changes are additive or clarifying hardening unless an implementation relied on unsafe ambiguity.

Candidate-first governance

ARPA-CAND-PP-04 is the governing Candidate amendment. It does not create Candidate v0.11.0. A new Candidate minor version should follow only when the amendment stack is intentionally consolidated into a new baseline.

Scope boundary

Revision -04 does not standardize a universal authentication protocol, universal action vocabulary, mandatory proof suite, mandatory event transport, TRQL dependency, or new IANA registries for every ARPA vocabulary.

Agent Registry Protocol documentation. Specification text and documentation are licensed as stated in the repository NOTICE and license files.

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