ZipPigeon technical whitepaper Updated Aug 2, 2026 3 min read

Treat context as evidence, not a credential

The prototype returns versioned canonical JSON and a SHA-256 digest for one delegated-access request. It does not mint or accept a transaction token, cannot be placed in an Authorization header, does not embed an access token, and does not claim conformance with the active transaction-token Internet-Draft.

  • Export is available only to the exact case owner or requesting agent.
  • Responses use Cache-Control: no-store.
  • Purpose and resource lists are not copied into audit metadata.

Bind the authorization chain

The export connects the initiating case owner, sponsoring user, exact agent workload identity and key generation, request digest, owner-authorization and signature digests, exact encrypted resources, signed purpose, lifecycle state, and declared request-to-resource call chain.

GET /api/agent-access/requests/:id/transaction-context

# Returns a versioned context export and its canonical SHA-256 digest.

Verify mapping and authorization separately

POST the exported object to the verification endpoint to compare it with authoritative request, grant, agent, owner, case, and policy records. The result separates schema, context digest, request digest, owner authorization, and canonical mapping checks from currentlyAuthorized.

POST /api/agent-access/transaction-contexts/verify

{ "contextExport": { "type": "zippigeon-agent-transaction-context-export", "version": 1 } }

Preserve historical truth without reviving access

A previously valid export can remain structurally intact after a grant is revoked, expired, consumed, re-keyed, or made ineligible by policy. Verification can therefore support evidence and debugging without converting an old authorization statement into permission for a new operation.

  • Integrity answers whether the supplied context still matches its canonical evidence.
  • Current authorization answers whether the underlying grant can authorize access now.
  • Consumers must not collapse these two decisions into one success flag.

Benefits and use cases

Transaction context helps systems carry explainable authorization evidence across a multi-step agent workflow. It is useful for audit correlation, policy-engine evaluation, incident reconstruction, interoperability experiments, and comparing the request an owner approved with the resource operation an agent later attempted.

  • Audit correlation: join one agent request to sponsor, owner, workload, and exact resources.
  • Policy evaluation: inspect a deterministic context without trusting caller-supplied labels.
  • Incident review: determine whether a historical export is intact and whether access was still authorized at verification time.

Use the prototype with explicit limits

Enable the route only for interoperability evaluation and keep the trust domain stable. Do not build a production token-acceptance contract around draft claim names or assume the exported JSON can travel as a bearer capability. Token issuance and acceptance remain out of scope until the standard and deployment trust model are stable.

AGENT_DELEGATED_ACCESS_ENABLED=true
AGENT_TRANSACTION_CONTEXT_ENABLED=true
AGENT_TRANSACTION_CONTEXT_TRUST_DOMAIN=files.example.com