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AARM conformance: the remaining gaps after R4 and R8 #457

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@imran-siddique

#442 closed R4 (five decision types) and R8 (telemetry export). Recording what is left from the AARM v1.0 assessment so it is not re-derived.

One decision unlocks three requirements

R2, R3 and R7 all need the same thing: a declared-intent input.

  • R2 wants context on the agent's intent, prior actions and thread. cMCP tracks prior actions and thread well (SessionState monotonic sensitivity, injection events, suspicious sequences, catalog drift). It has no notion of declared intent.
  • R3 wants the action evaluated against its alignment with stated intent. The action half is solid via Cedar; the alignment half has no input.
  • R7 wants semantic distance from original intent. There is drift detection, but it is tool-catalog rug-pull detection and injection detection, which is a different thing and easy to mistake for this.

Adding a declared-intent input changes the MCP-facing surface, so this is one product decision rather than three tasks. Claiming Core with a documented deviation on R2 and R3 is a legitimate alternative and should be an explicit choice rather than a default.

Two smaller items

R6, identity binding. Passes today, but STATUS.md marks Agent Manifest binding optional, and R6 says every receipt MUST be bound. A named conformance profile that makes it mandatory, leaving the developer default alone, closes this cleanly.

R9, least privilege. Partial. There is resource-scoped Cedar policy plus credential and PII redaction, and ephemeral gateway keys. What is absent is issuing short-lived minimal-scope credentials to the agent, so enforcement is deny-based rather than scope-based.

Worth stating in any eventual listing

The differentiator is not the badge. On the reference listing, R5 is satisfied by Merkle-chained SHA-256, which is software integrity. cMCP satisfies R5 and R6 with a TEE-sealed signing key and an attestation report a verifier checks without trusting the operator. That would make it the only AARM listing whose receipts are hardware-attested.

Related: agentrust-io/trace-spec#114 covers getting step_up and defer into TRACE Claims, which is the remaining visibility gap on R4.

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