# Context, authority and evidence templates

Version 0.1 · CC BY-NC 4.0 — attribute to Hanif Karimi, contextualagentic.com

Three one-page templates. Fill them in before the agent is given authority, not afterwards
when someone is asking. Each is deliberately short: a template nobody completes is worth
less than a rough one everybody does.

> Drafted for the companion material of *The Contextual Agentic Enterprise*. These are
> working documents, not a control framework, and they map to no certification scheme.

---

## 1. Context specification

*What the agent is allowed to know, where that comes from, and how you know it is true.*

| | |
|---|---|
| **Agent** | |
| **Task** | |
| **Principal it acts for** | |

**Sources.** For each: what it is, who owns it, how fresh it is guaranteed to be, and what
happens when it is stale.

| Source | Owner | Freshness guarantee | Behaviour when stale |
|---|---|---|---|
| | | | |

**Entitlement filtering.** How context is narrowed to what the principal could see
themselves:

**Content treated as data, not instructions.** The test that proves it, and where it runs:

**Recorded with each decision.** Which source identifiers appear in the evidence record:

**What this agent must never see.** Be specific; "sensitive data" is not an answer:

---

## 2. Authority grant

*What the agent may do, on whose authority, and how to take it away.*

| | |
|---|---|
| **Principal** | |
| **Granted by** (a person, named) | |
| **Granted on / expires** | |
| **Review due** | |

**Scopes.** The actions granted. Anything not listed is refused.

| Scope | Resources | Limit | Irreversible? | Compensating action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | | | |

**Autonomous limit.** Above this the agent may prepare but not act:

**Escalates to.** A named role, and what happens if they do not answer (the answer is:
it stays held):

**Enforced by.** The component that decides — which must not be the model:

**Second boundary.** The independent mechanism that also stops it:

**Revocation.** The exact procedure, and the date it was last rehearsed:

---

## 3. Evidence specification

*What gets recorded, where it goes, and what argument it is meant to support.*

**The question this evidence answers.** Write the question a reviewer will actually ask:

**Recorded at each decision:**

- [ ] The action proposed, and by which principal
- [ ] Each control evaluated, and its outcome — including the ones that passed
- [ ] The grant relied on
- [ ] The context sources used
- [ ] The policy-set version, so the decision can be re-evaluated
- [ ] The outcome, including refusals and holds
- [ ] Who approved, when, and what they were shown

**Written on refusal paths?** If no, stop and fix that first:

**Storage.** Where, with what retention, and why that retention:

**Tamper evidence.** Retention lock, append-only, or a hash chain — and the verification
that has actually been run:

**Replay.** Can a past decision be re-evaluated from the record and produce the same
outcome? What was replayed, and when:

**Who reads this.** If the answer is nobody, the record is a cost with no benefit: