Authority, delegated in writing
A corporation acts through people it authorizes: officers hold its authority and delegate it downward with limits. An Agent Mandate is that delegation as a signed document a machine can check, and a charter gives the organization itself a verifiable identity on the mesh. This is the corporate companion to the Agent SoW and Agent RFP specifications.
organization harborandline.example [ENFORCED] domain proof, checked by the registry holder mari@harborandline.example [EVIDENCE] the account this authorizes powers form · amend · terminate · award [ENFORCED] acts outside them are refused ceiling 50M XCR per engagement · 200M per month [ENFORCED] checked at approval time term expires 2027-08-01 · revocable by issuer [ENFORCED] a chain dies with its root legal Delaware, US · SR-20241102-88417 [RECORDED] a statement, not a verification
The organization becomes a verifiable principal
Today, the company behind an agent is a display string. An engagement that names "Harbor & Line Outfitters" as the owner names nobody a machine can check.
A charter fixes that. It is the organization's constitutive record: its domain, its root authority keys, and its stated legal identity. The registry verifies domain control before hosting it, the same trust move the web makes with certificates, so the domain is the verified part and is always displayed as such. The legal details are recorded statements; no protocol can check a corporate filing, and this one does not pretend to.
The charter names two roles, and they are deliberately separate. Allocators hold the root authority keys: the business people entitled to commit the company's money, a CFO, a managing partner, an owner. Issuing mandates, amending the charter, and rotating keys are their acts, under a signing threshold the charter states. An administrator maintains the record: files the charter, keeps the domain proof current, and holds no authority to spend or delegate. The IT person who runs the setup is the administrator; the root keys end up with the business.
Authority is delegated downward, with limits
A mandate names an issuer, a holder, and the bounds: which powers (forming engagements, amending them, terminating them, awarding RFPs), up to what spend per engagement and per month, in what scope of offerings, until what date. The issuer is root authority or the holder of a mandate that permits sub-delegation.
The mandates in force are the organization's ledger of spending authority. Each one is a line: this account, these powers, this much per engagement and per month, on these offerings, until this date. There is no separate ledger to maintain, and an audit of who can spend what is a registry query. A mandate can also name the organization as payer, so the company funds one treasury and the same ledger says who may draw how much from it.
One rule governs every chain: authority narrows going down, never widens. A sub-mandate must be at most as broad as its issuer's in every dimension, and the registry refuses one that widens anything. Revocation is a signed act that takes effect the moment it is recorded, and it cascades: revoking a mandate revokes everything issued under it.
Approval comes to prove authorization, not just presence
Agent SoW section 6.1 lets a contract demand that a person approve, and it is explicit about the limit: the ceremony proves a verified human was present. It does not prove they were entitled to bind anyone. For an individual owner those are the same person. For a corporation they are not.
Under a mandate, the platform extends the same held-pending approval with five checks: the person's account holds a mandate for the organization, the mandate is in force and its chain verifies to root authority, the act is within its powers, the price is within its ceilings, and the offerings are within its scope. Any failure refuses the act with the failing check named. The approval record then carries the mandate id, so the counterparty sees not just that a person confirmed, but that a person confirmed who held current, sufficient, traceable authority.
What is enforced, what is evidence, what is only recorded
The chain
Domain proof, signatures, the narrowing rule, powers, ceilings, expiry, revocation. Bytes a registry and a platform refuse violations of, wherever approval is held pending.
The record
Who issued what to whom, and who approved which engagement under which mandate. Signed and kept, so after a compromise or a dispute the blast radius is computable, not debatable.
The law
That the company legally exists, that its officers were validly appointed, that a board resolution stands behind the root keys. No runtime can check these, and nothing here claims to.
What goes in the two documents
| Document | Field | What it pins down | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charter | Domain | The organization's anchor; verified by DNS or a well-known path before hosting | enforced |
| Charter | Root authority | The allocators' keys and the signing threshold for acts of root authority | evidence |
| Charter | Administrator | Keys that file and maintain the record; never sufficient for an act of authority | enforced |
| Charter | Legal identity | Jurisdiction and registration, as stated by the organization | recorded |
| Mandate | Issuer and holder | Who delegated, to whose account, on whose signature | evidence |
| Mandate | Powers | Form, amend, terminate, award; a power not listed is not held | enforced |
| Mandate | Ceilings | Spend per engagement and per calendar month, checked at approval | enforced |
| Mandate | Scope | Which offerings the authority covers | enforced |
| Mandate | Settlement | Whose balance pays: the holder's own account, or the organization's treasury | enforced |
| Mandate | Term and revocation | Start, expiry, and the signed act that ends it early, cascading to sub-mandates | enforced |
The enforced rows hold where the registry hosts the documents and the platform holds approvals pending. Passed peer to peer with no registry, they drop to evidence, and whatever displays them must show the grade that actually applies.
What this leaves out
Org charts, titles, reporting lines, and HR systems: a title on a mandate is prose, and the mesh only needs to know who may bind the entity and within what limits. Single sign-on and enterprise identity: a holder is an account, and how its person signs in is the platform's concern. Legal-entity verification: the legal block is recorded, and a counterparty who needs certainty about a company's existence has due diligence for that. What the protocol gives them is narrower and checkable: the organization's own keys, on its own domain, signed the delegations its people act under.