[TECH-2] Deprovisioning is absent

[PieterKas]

Source: email from Yaron Sheffer to the WIMSE mailing list, Review of draft-klrc-aiagent-auth (editor's copy). Quoted verbatim below.

The document discusses credential provisioning and rotation (Section 7) but says nothing about deprovisioning. Section 7 should add a third phase — credential deprovisioning — even if it simply means stopping rotation when the agent is terminated. Beyond that, the identifier lifecycle is a distinct concern: when an agent is retired, its identifier needs to remain referenceable for forensic and audit purposes. The document should discuss how long an agent identifier should be retained, and in what registry, after the agent is gone.

[PieterKas]

cc @yaronf

[yaronf]

From @rsharath

From implementation experience, two parts have been worth separating:

1. Revoking an agent's credential also needs to terminate the credentials it exchanged downstream (the token-exchange chain). Otherwise a "revoked" agent's delegated sub-agents keep operating. ZeroID implements this as a cascade over the delegation chain.
2. Agent identifier lifecycle is distinct from the credential lifecycle. When an agent is retired, its identifier needs to remain referenceable for forensic and audit correlation. The draft should give guidance on the retention window and the registry that holds it, distinct from the credential lifecycle, which ends at revocation.

We would be glad to contribute a third "Deprovisioning" phase for Section 7 (alongside Initial Provisioning and Rotation/Renewal) plus identifier-retention guidance.

[PieterKas]

Identifiers persist, credentials expire.

In terms of terminating exchanged credentials, I imagine that is the sort of thing that can be facilitated by SSF - as long as the credential isssuer knows which tokens were issued, it can signal status change.