Architecture Decision Records¶
This page lists the design decisions behind Agent Manifest. Each one is written up as an Architecture Decision Record (ADR): a short note on what was decided, what else was considered, and what follows from it. Read them when you want to know why the format works the way it does; you do not need them to use the SDK.
An accepted ADR is never edited to reverse it. A decision that replaces an earlier one gets a new ADR that points back to the old one.
| ADR | Title | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 0001 | RFC 8785 (JCS) for canonical serialization | Accepted |
| 0002 | Ed25519 as the standard cryptographic profile | Accepted |
| 0003 | RFC 9162 Merkle tree with domain separation | Accepted |
| 0004 | Pydantic v2 for schema modeling in the Python SDK | Accepted |
| 0005 | ML-DSA-65 and hybrid Ed25519+ML-DSA-65 signature support | Accepted |
| 0006 | Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) embedded approval record design | Accepted |
| 0007 | JSON-Lines append-only CRL as the SDK revocation format | Accepted |
| 0008 | Four conformance levels (0 to 3) rather than binary conformant/non-conformant | Accepted |
| 0009 | SPIFFE URIs as the canonical identity format for agent_id and issuer | Accepted |
| 0010 | Runtime attestation freshness proofs via caller-controlled REPORT_DATA | Accepted |
| 0011 | The manifest is a signed document, not a JWT/JOSE profile; envelope moves to COSE_Sign1 | Accepted |
| 0012 | @context URI moves to a domain we control; v0.1 URL withdrawn, consumers cut over | Accepted |
| 0013 | Take a CBOR library, not a COSE library; the COSE structures are built in-repo | Accepted |
| 0014 | Sign with the fully-specified Ed25519 code point (-19); keep verifying the deprecated -8 | Accepted |
| 0015 | Agent Plugins manifest reference | Accepted |
To propose a new ADR, open a GitHub issue using the spec change template and follow the ADR template.
For practical implementation guidance that corresponds to these decisions, see the tutorials: HITL approval workflows (ADR-0006), revocation and key rotation (ADR-0007), hardware attestation (ADR-0008), and server-side verification.