The Mandrel Specification

The declarative contract for autonomous agent governance.

The Mandrel Spec is the foundational “Contract” of the Mandrel Project. It is a declarative definition that outlines an agent’s operational boundaries, target MCP tools, security constraints, and lifecycle metadata.

It is designed as a direct extension of the Agent Card standard defined by the Linux Foundation’s Agent2Agent (A2A) project, providing the hardened governance required for enterprise-grade autonomous systems.

The Two States of a Spec

To maintain high-integrity governance, the spec exists in two distinct states:

  1. The Source Spec: Authored by the domain developer and stored in version control. This contains the intent of the agent.
  2. The Realized Spec: Enriched by the CI/CD pipeline or Metrology Lab with cryptographic attestations and binary authorization. This is the definitive source of truth for the Collet (Enforcer) and Gantry (Operator).

Normative Specification Documents

  • Core Schema: Detailed breakdown of the MandrelSpec schema fields (Governance, Identity, Network, Runtime).
  • Identity & Security: Compound identities (SPIFFE + Nested JWTs), Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE), and Proof-of-Intent verification.
  • Orchestration & Delegation: How agents interact and the Max-Hop protocol.
  • Extensions Reference: Field-level reference for Mandrel-specific controls and the plugin extension block.
  • PlatformPolicy Schema: Platform-scoped governance ceilings and parameter baking rules applied during promotion.
  • ChipRateTable Schema: Platform-scoped table mapping model IDs to normalized Chip multipliers.
  • Metrology Contract: The normative contract defining promotion gate rules, JCS canonicalization, and signature verification.

Rationalization with LF A2A

By maintaining compatibility with the base A2A Agent Card schema, Mandrel-governed agents remain interoperable with the broader AI ecosystem while exposing high-performance governance extensions enforced by The Collet (Sidecar).

Source

The Mandrel Spec schema and reference YAML are hosted on GitLab: gitlab.com/the-mandrel-project/mandrel-spec

Core Schema

The formal definition of a Mandrel Spec contract.

Identity & Security

The zero-trust security architecture of the Mandrel Project.

Orchestration & Delegation

How Mandrel orchestrator agents govern their decision scope and delegate tasks.

Extensions Reference

Field-level reference for Mandrel-specific governance controls and the spec.extensions plugin extension block.

Metrology Contract

The normative contract defining a promotion authority and metrology lab.

PlatformPolicy Schema

Platform-scoped governance ceilings applied during the promotion gate.

ChipRateTable Schema

Platform-scoped table mapping model IDs to normalized Chip multipliers.