Agent Decision Receipts

Agent Decision Receipts

Overview

A log says an action happened. A receipt is tamper-evident: it records who, what, and under which policy, and it is signed, so any later edit breaks the signature. This skill mints one for a consequential agent action and verifies it later from the certificate alone: no database, no network, no trusting the issuer.

The crypto is not in this skill. It is the open-source OpenAgentOntology receipt primitive (Apache-2.0), which signs every receipt with Ed25519 and the post-quantum legs ML-DSA-65 (FIPS 204) + SLH-DSA (FIPS 205) when the post-quantum backend is installed. This skill is the decision layer: when to mint, what to put in, how to verify. One install, no per-skill crypto.

Three decisions, nothing else:

1. Does this action need a receipt? — side-effecting + consequential + later-provable = yes.
2. Mint the receipt — build the action manifest, sign it with the OAO primitive.
3. Verify it — recompute the hash, check each signature leg, from the cert alone.

This skill is NOT log analysis. Logs describe what happened and can be silently edited. A receipt is minted before/at execution and breaks if edited. Use logs for debugging; use receipts for evidence.

This skill is NOT a hosted notary. It mints a LOCAL, self-signed receipt anyone can verify offline. Cross-organization verification (one org proving to another) is a separate hosted service, out of scope here.

This skill is NOT a legal opinion. It produces evidence shaped to support FRE 902(13)/(14)-style certification and EU AI Act Article 12 record-keeping. Whether a given receipt is admitted is a question for counsel.

Quick Start

# Install the open-source receipt primitive (Apache-2.0). Add [pq] for the post-quantum legs.
pip install "openagentontology[pq]"

# 1. Build + validate an action manifest (stdlib only, no crypto, no network)
python scripts/build_action_manifest.py --agent my-deploy-agent --operation deploy \
    --target prod/api --policy "EU AI Act Art 12" --out action.json

# 2. Mint the receipt over it (Ed25519 + post-quantum legs)
python -c "import json,openagentontology.receipt as r; \
  print(json.dumps(r.mint_receipt(json.load(open('action.json')), decision='ACTION_GOVERNED')))" > receipt.json

# 3. Verify from the cert alone (no DB, no network)
python -c "import json,openagentontology.receipt as r; \
  print(r.verify_receipt(json.load(open('receipt.json'))))"
# -> {'ok': True, 'sig_ok': True, ... 'reason': 'verified from the cert alone via: ed25519, ml_dsa, slh_dsa'}