Agent mandates and bounded delegation
A mandate is a structured statement of delegated authority. It turns a broad goal into a bounded grant that an operator can inspect, accept, limit, expire or revoke.
What a mandate should say
A useful mandate identifies the principal granting authority, the agent or service receiving it, the task, covered resources, permitted actions, limits, duration and conditions that require escalation. It should also state how the mandate is represented and checked by the system.
- Subject and issuer identity.
- Purpose, actions and resources in scope.
- Limits, exceptions and approval thresholds.
- Start, expiry, revocation and pending-work rules.
Keep the grant separate from execution
A mandate records permission; it is not itself an instruction to carry out every possible action, nor evidence that an action succeeded. Each proposal still needs to be evaluated against the current mandate and relevant policy.
When a mandate changes, the system should be able to explain which version governed a particular decision. This is essential for reproducibility, incident review and correcting an overly broad grant.
A design question, not an availability claim
The mandate model described here is a general design framework. It does not assert that Noesia currently issues or enforces production mandates. Compare permissions and authorization.