A signature grants a declared reach.

The contract

Consumed by its shape, not its implementation

Signatio is an optional requirement a project chooses by installing the pack and declaring the provider (ADR-001). A project depends on the shape of what it produces:

• subject_digest is the digest of the Work Order being granted.
• scope is the paths and aspects the grant covers.
• proof is a signature, or any other proof, tagged with the scheme that produced it. Verification dispatches on the tag and fails closed on a scheme it cannot evaluate.
• principal is optional: a verifier receives the attributes its decision reads, not necessarily who the signer is.

Three mechanisms

One responsibility each

verify and authorize touch public material only, so they may run anywhere: a daemon, a plugin, a CI job, the agent's own session. sign is packaged apart; where it may be installed is declared, never assumed.

Principles

What holds, by mechanism

Three binaries

Only one holds the key, and it never faces the network

signatio-boot is not a fourth service: it is the launcher every installed use goes through.

Workflow

How the binaries work together

Projects and the administrator talk to signatiod over TLS. signatiod holds no key: it asks the custodian, through a local socket and nothing else, to sign every answer. The numbers are the steps of the request below.

⤢Enlarge the diagram

A request, end to end

Every answer is signed, a refusal included

1. Token

   The client proves itself at /v1/token with its id, project and proof: a client secret, of which the store keeps only the sha256, or a signed challenge, a single-use nonce from /v1/challenge signed with the client's key.

2. Operation

   With the token, /v1/op carries the request: Whoami, Authorize, VerifySignature, Record, RegisterProject, RotationNotice, Holders, HatsOf, Log. A client reaches only its allowed actions.

3. Signature

   The daemon builds the answer and has the signer sign it. Every answer carries signature { key_id, scheme, value }, a refusal included. What is recorded is written to the project's chain.

4. Verification

   The project checks every answer with the authority key it pinned before asking anything, received out of band. TLS protects the transport; the signature proves the authority answered.

Rotation. A second custodian holds the next key. A rotation notice is signed by both custodians; from its effective time the daemon signs through the new one, and at every start it checks its custodians against the stored notices.

Run it

Three ways it runs

A project associates by receiving the handover: the endpoint, the certificate that vouches for it, the authority key to pin and the administrator's client. The administrator then registers it with its profile, whose digest the project pins.

Boundaries

What Signatio is not

ontoref Gov

One domain in three layers: how a project governed by ontoref governs itself.

What it is

Gov is ontoref's own domain. It holds the arrangement — what a project's boundary declares, its members, which artefacts a consumer inherits — and the exercise — what work is committed and how an act is delivered. Its name is the root of governance, governability and government, and elects none of them.

Why

A decision, a boundary or a delivery that lives only in someone's memory binds no one. In Gov each one is a declaration a project can be held to, and what holds it is a mechanism, not a good intention.

What for

A project reaches Gov by bond, never by imposition, and takes only the parts it needs. In signature governance each project carries one: the contract, the operations of work, the signature, the dossier, the agreement and the signing on an agent's behalf. Beside them, the capabilities any state of governance uses: the host boundary, deployment, the observed session and the opening by name.

How governance is layered

Protocol · base

ontoref's base: bonds and planes, content bound by digest, the unsigned work order, the check form, and mandatum's types. Every project is written in it; a project can bond without adopting any governance.

Management and governability · gov

The gov domain, in ontoref: how the constellation is organised, its management modes, and decisions held by validators.

Signature governance · foedus

The foedus domain, provided by the foedus project and operated by warden: the agreement, each party's annex and the tests that prove it. A project is here because it is a party to the agreement.

Isolation, provisioning, wuwei and openbyname are capabilities any state of governance uses — the agent's boundary, deployment, sessions, and running tasks locally — not governance: governance needs them, they do not need governance.

Each project chooses its governance mode

Governability (coherence) · ontoref alone

Coherence only: ontoref checks that the declarations hold together. No signature.

Auditable governance · signature

The person signs. It detects a departure; it does not prevent it.

Applied governance · signature + isolation

Signature and isolation together. It prevents.

More about ontoref Gov →

Part of the same system

signature governance

capabilities