What is Authority?
Authority — The granted right to act or decide within a scope, the source of an agent's permission.
Authority is the primitive that answers by what right does this agent act? Every autonomous action traces back to a permission someone granted.
It is the layer the trust stack rests on. Authority defines the boundary of what an agent may do, and delegation, capability, and override all operate against it.
Where authority sits in the stack
In the four-layer architecture of the agentic web, authority is a Substrate (L1) concept — it the cited foundation every layer grounds in. See the thesis for how the layers compound.
Authority in the portfolio
22 positions in the Semantic Substrate portfolio carry the Authority primitive — 15 available individually, 7 held as a coordinated set. Explore the Authority cluster →
Quick answers
- What is Authority in agentic systems?
- The granted right to act or decide within a scope, the source of an agent's permission.
- Where does Authority sit in the agentic stack?
- Authority sits at the Substrate (L1) layer — it the cited foundation every layer grounds in.
- How many Authority domain positions exist in the Semantic Substrate portfolio?
- 22 positions carry the Authority primitive — 15 available individually, the rest held as a coordinated set.