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Core concepts
Six nouns and the sentence that connects them.
The sentence
Who authorizes whom, to do what, to which resource, under what conditions, until when — and afterwards, what proof is there that it happened that way.
The nouns
| Noun | One line |
|---|---|
| Identity | An Ed25519 keypair and a did:key. Names a party. |
| Permit | A signed document bounding what a party may ever ask for. |
| Policy | Deterministic rules saying what may happen now. |
| Approval | A person deciding, recorded so it can be checked. |
| Execution | Acting on an ALLOW, with an outcome — including UNKNOWN. |
| Proof | Checking an audit record against an anchored root. |
Three sentences worth memorising
- A permit is not authority. Authority is the meet of permit, policy and approval.
- REQUIRE_APPROVAL is not an allow. Treating “not DENY” as go is a hole.
- UNKNOWN is not FAILED. Never retry it automatically.