Idea 01 of 04
Zeroth Law
A ≤ E. Autonomy never exceeds the environment that contains it.
- The silent veto is the physical expression of this constraint.
- Once the constraint is structural, policy no longer has to carry the load.
created 20 October 2026 · last modified 2026-10-25
Understand · the protocol
The protocol, one idea at a time.
KTP is an experimental authorization protocol for autonomous systems. Four ideas carry it, ten more deepen them, and each one here links to the page that explains it and the RFC that governs it.
Start here
The four that carry it
Idea 02 of 04
The Trust Score
E_trust = E_base × (1 − R). Trust is a continuous coefficient, not a credential.
- Earned through trajectory, contracted by the risk field.
- Every decision becomes a comparison rather than a lookup, at the moment of the call and not the moment a credential was issued.
The shape of the model is public; the full instrumented form is held in private research.
- RFCKTP-Core
- SiteThe Trust Force
Idea 03 of 04
Context Signals & Risk Factors
The measurement catalogue and the six declared inputs used for authorization.
- Context Signals name the evidence. Risk Factors define the six deployment-declared aggregates the decision layer consumes.
- Soul is evaluated separately, as a veto, before aggregation.
Idea 04 of 04
Lineage
A new agent has no trajectory. Trust cannot be issued out of nothing.
- Sponsorship transfers partial trust from an established agent and makes the sponsor liable for the outcome.
- Tethered → Divergent → Persistent. The tether creates a trajectory; the trajectory creates trust.
- RFCKTP-Identity
- SiteLineage
Then these
The ten that deepen it
Each builds on one or more of the four. Open one for what it is, why it matters, and where to read it.
Federated spaces where the protocol is enforced. Five layers; each an RFC. A workload inside a Blue Zone cannot escape A ≤ E.
Why it mattersThe physics only holds where the substrate enforces it. Blue Zones are the boundary between zones where KTP runs and the Wild Internet where static credentials still rule. Federation is how they talk across the gap without becoming the gap.
Builds on Context Signals & Risk Factors
- RFCKTP-Zones
- SiteBlue Zones
Binary, non-negotiable prohibitions. Separate from the continuous trust coefficient. The boundary beyond which measurement must stop.
Why it mattersEvery framework needs a place where measurement ends and ethics begin. Soul Constraints name that place explicitly. They are authored, not derived, and the distinction matters: a single bit, allowed or not, resists being traded away in aggregate optimization.
Builds on The Trust Score, Zeroth Law
- RFCKTP-Governance
- SiteThe Soul veto
How raw packets become Context Signals and then Risk Factors. Sensors, oracle signatures, provenance, decay, and declared aggregation.
Why it mattersMeasurement is the fragile part. Bad inputs create unearned confidence. The telemetry pipeline is where epistemic humility gets encoded: provenance, decay, observer effects, and refusal to hide disagreement through aggregation.
Builds on Context Signals & Risk Factors
- RFCKTP-Signals
- SiteTelemetry
The execution gate refuses an action when its requested autonomy exceeds the environment's capacity. Implementations must record the reason and provide an appeal or repair path for the governing decision.
Why it mattersThe immediate execution constraint and governance review serve different purposes. Review can correct evidence or a governing decision, then support a new evaluation. It cannot make an action safe while that action still exceeds the environment's capacity.
Builds on Zeroth Law
- RFCKTP-Enforce
- SiteSilent Veto
Signed evidence that an agent survived environmental stress while maintaining coherent behavior. Not proof-of-work. Not proof-of-stake. Proof of having been tested and having held.
Why it mattersCredentials expire the moment they are issued. Proof of Resilience is continuous and trajectory-bound: it accumulates as the agent demonstrably survives events a weaker trajectory would not have.
Builds on Lineage, The Trust Score
- RFCKTP-Identity
- SiteLineage
Distributed authority for Context Signals and Trust Proofs. Three or more geographically independent Oracles sign by threshold consensus. No single entity declares trust alone.
Why it mattersA single-signer oracle is a single point of failure, a single point of capture, and a single point of deception. Multiple independent sensors that must agree raise the attacker's cost and reduce measurement drift.
Builds on Telemetry Pipeline, Context Signals & Risk Factors
- RFCKTP-Oracle
- SiteTrust Oracle
Escalating friction that slows an agent approaching environmental limits. As risk rises, latency injects, compute throttles, time dilates, network paths narrow. Analog constraint, not binary refusal.
Why it mattersCliff failures arrive with no warning. Gravity provides graceful degradation: the agent feels the environment tightening before the Silent Veto fires, and can adjust before the constraint becomes absolute.
Builds on Zeroth Law, Context Signals & Risk Factors
- RFCKTP-Attenuation
- SiteCore concepts
The upper bound on trust any single agent can accumulate. Beyond the ceiling, further E_base stops compounding. The system declines to let one trajectory become too heavy to check.
Why it mattersMonoculture fails suddenly. A network with one agent at full trust is one compromise away from collapse; a network with many agents at moderate trust survives any one of them failing. The ceiling is resilience by distribution.
Builds on The Trust Score, Lineage
- RFCKTP-Governance
- SiteTrust Tiers
Identity as a trajectory through state space, a vector of behaviors, actions, and outcomes over time, rather than a static credential. An agent's identity is the shape of its path.
Why it mattersSnapshots lie. A credential verified at issue says nothing about what the agent is doing at call time. Vector Identity asks what have you been doing, not what do you have, and treats discontinuity in the trajectory as the primary signal of compromise.
Builds on Lineage
- RFCKTP-Identity
- SiteContinuity
The epistemic ladder: Data → Information → Knowledge → Wisdom. The Third Language is the tacit layer beneath Wisdom: what cannot be written down, only transmitted through relationship, lineage, and repeated demonstration.
Why it mattersEvery system encodes the first three layers. Wisdom and the Third Language live outside explicit encoding; they are what trust infrastructure carries when it carries anything beyond data. The ladder names what the substrate must support.
Builds on Context Signals & Risk Factors
- RFCKTP-Information
- SiteCore concepts
Go deeper
Every page that goes further
Trust Tiers Four operational tiers that gate agent capability as environmental stability shifts.Lineage Authority as trajectory, not credential. How identity is earned through proven history.Continuity Identity across change: where a lineage begins, an upgrade as a witnessed transition, and what forces succession.The Constitution Ten immutable laws that make authorization a property of the substrate rather than a policy anyone can override.The Trust Force Trust as a measurable force, bounded by the substrate ceiling. The shape of the model; the full form stays private.The coordinate system Seven answerable questions in place of a claim with no falsifier, with the framework's own filled-in record.Put a project on the map The same seven questions as a tool: fill them in for a project and see where it stands.Dry Dock A Blue Zone you can sit at. Pick a persona, try an action, watch the substrate respond under A ≤ E.
The RFC site keeps its own Learn section: Getting started, core concepts, use cases.