Mission-Bound Authorization for OAuth 2.0

1.1. Why a New Object

OAuth already has objects near this need, but none is the approved task. A scope value or an authorization_details entry ([RFC9396]) expresses authority but neither the task it serves nor a lifecycle of its own. An access token is a short-lived projection; its jti identifies the token, not the task. A refresh token preserves the ability to obtain further tokens but commits no bounded, approved authority. A consent record proves that an approval event happened; it does not govern the resulting work as it continues. The Mission is the durable object these project from: the approved task that bounds and outlives them, and that every derived token refers back to.¶

Put plainly: Rich Authorization Requests express authority; a Mission expresses an approved task with a lifecycle. The Mission is a separate object because that approved-task lifecycle, not a new way to express authority, is what OAuth lacks. A Mission is therefore not another authorization_details type; it is the durable, approval-backed object an Authority Set is derived for and gated by.¶

1.2. Relationship to Other Authorization Objects

A grant, in the sense of FAPI Grant Management [FAPI.GrantManagement], is a durable, queryable, revocable container of consented authorization data. It records consent to authority but carries no task, no integrity commitment, and no derivation gating; a deployment MAY surface Mission revocation through a grant-management-style API. [I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth] names the agent's mission and leaves its translation into authorization out of scope; this document specifies that translation. Decision-layer access-request and approval workflows, such as the OpenID AuthZEN Access Request and Approval Profile [AuthZEN.ARAP], manage approval tasks but define no issuance binding; this document supplies the issuance-bound object such workflows complete into.¶

Nearby individual proposals each carry one Mission property without the others: task-linked Rich Authorization Requests with revocation webhooks carry a task link, intent-digest admission assertions carry an intent commitment, and offline capability attenuation ([I-D.draft-niyikiza-oauth-attenuating-agent-tokens]) carries offline narrowing. None combines the durable approved object, state-gated issuance, and integrity anchors this document defines.¶

1.3. The Mission, the Plan, and Execution

The Mission is the durable, AS-held object that commits the approved authority and owns the task's lifecycle. Two related things an agent produces around a task are deliberately not the Mission and carry no authority of their own.¶

The agent's plan, how it decomposes the task, chooses tools, and delegates to sub-agents, is the agent's own strategy and is out of scope for this document. It grants nothing: authority a sub-agent exercises is carried by the act chain (Section 11), derived from the Mission and only ever narrowed from it (Section 5.1), never created by the plan.¶

The agent's execution, the tokens it derives, the calls it makes, and the decisions taken on them, references the Mission but cannot expand it. Revoking the Mission stops further derivation (Section 9); it does not undo actions already completed. Evaluating each action against the Mission at the point of use is the runtime layer's concern (Section 15.5), not this document's.¶

The invariant across all three: the plan and the execution draw on the Mission's authority; neither enlarges it.¶

1.4. Relationship to Agent-Identity Specifications

This document is complementary to [I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth] and reuses its model: the agent is the OAuth client (client_id); the delegating user or system is the token sub. This document does not define agent identity, credentialing, or posture; it defines the approved-task artifact those identities act within. An agent authenticated and delegated per that specification uses the mechanisms here to obtain Mission-bound tokens.¶

1.5. Applicability

This profile targets OAuth deployments where authority serves a durable, user-approved task that spans more than one token, request, or audience: an agent pursuing a multi-step objective on a user's behalf, or a workflow whose audit must join activity across hops on a shared task. It is not intended for, and adds cost without benefit to, single-request user flows, machine-to-machine service credentials, or short-lived authorizations where the credential's lifetime is the task's lifetime; those use OAuth unchanged.¶

A Mission SHOULD be scoped to a concrete task, not to an agent's whole lifetime. A deployment SHOULD prefer narrow, per-task Missions, each separately approved and revocable, over a single broad standing Mission that accumulates authority across unrelated tasks. The durable object is the approved task: keeping it task-scoped is what makes its authority and audit meaningful and bounds the blast radius on compromise to one task. An agent pursuing many tasks holds many Missions, not one broad one.¶

1.6. Scope and Future Work

This document is a self-contained, minimum-viable profile: it binds Missions to OAuth 2.0 and is implementable on its own, depending only on the OAuth and JOSE specifications it cites.¶

One normative dependency is on an in-progress individual draft, so this document cannot advance ahead of it: the OAuth Actor Profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-actor-profile]) for the act chain. That dependency is confined to the OPTIONAL Delegation capability, so the mandatory single-domain core does not depend on it. Cross-domain projection, a single hop that lets an Authorization Server in another trust domain honor a Mission, is specified by the companion Mission Cross-Domain Projection profile [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain], which carries the identity-chaining and ID-JAG dependencies with it.¶

Separate from this document, and not required to implement it, are several capabilities now specified as OPTIONAL companion profiles: an additional integrity anchor over a structured consent disclosure (consent_rendering_hash, Section 15.1) is defined by Mission Consent Evidence [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-consent-evidence]; mission expansion is defined by Mission Expansion [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-expansion]; and a cross-domain status or event-distribution mechanism for tighter revocation is defined by Mission Status [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status] and Mission Lifecycle Signals [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-signals]. A deployment implements this document without any of them. Remaining future work, not yet specified, includes: a substrate-neutral generalization of the Mission model across non-OAuth authorization substrates; the normative carriage of Mission context in Transaction Tokens ([I-D.draft-ietf-oauth-transaction-tokens]), shown only illustratively in the companion's end-to-end example; and, for a community that wants cross-vendor agreement on what a task authorizes within a vertical, an OPTIONAL derivation profile: a registry of standard task types mapped to authority templates, so that two vendors in that profile derive comparable Authority Sets. This document deliberately does not standardize the derivation algorithm itself (Section 5); a vertical profile is the appropriate vehicle where portable derivation is genuinely needed.¶

1.7. Non-Goals

The following are deliberately out of scope. Each is a recurring question for agent authorization; naming it here records that it was considered and where it belongs, not that it was overlooked.¶

• Semantic / intent verification. This profile binds a token to an approved authority and task; it does not evaluate whether a given runtime action serves the Mission's purpose beyond matching the approved authorization_details and constraints. Per-action evaluation is the runtime layer's role (Section 15.5). Verifying an agent's declared reasoning against the task is a further attestation problem outside both layers.¶

• Approval-free authorization upgrade. The Authority Set is committed at approval; this profile defines no mid-stream widening that bypasses consent. Widening requires a new approval, a successor Mission, as specified by Mission Expansion [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-expansion]; a widening that no consent authorizes remains out of scope.¶

• Lifecycle event distribution. A Resource Server learns Mission state from the token lifetime or optional introspection (Section 10); this profile defines no push-based notification of Mission state changes. A Shared Signals ([RFC8935]) / CAEP profile for Mission lifecycle events is specified separately by the Mission Lifecycle Signals profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-signals]), not here.¶

• Human-in-the-loop suspension. The base lifecycle here is active, revoked, expired (Section 9). A suspended state with resume/complete transitions is defined as an OPTIONAL extension by the Mission Status and Lifecycle profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]); a pending-human-approval state and a holding-token pause-and-resume protocol remain future lifecycle work.¶

• Multi-hop cross-domain provenance. A single cross-domain hop is specified by the companion ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]); chaining a Mission across more than one trust-domain boundary, and the verifiable provenance that would require, are future work.¶

• Decentralized agent identity. Agent identity and credentialing are out of scope ([I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth], and workload identity efforts such as WIMSE); this profile governs the approved-task artifact those identities act within, not the identities themselves.¶

• Cross-audience unlinkability. A single canonical Mission Identifier and the authority_hash it shares deliberately let any party correlate a Mission's activity across audiences and resources. This is a design choice, not an omission: a stable, correlatable anchor is what lets a Resource Server, a cross-domain Resource AS, and an auditor bind evidence to one approved Mission, which is a core goal of this document and its companion profiles. Pairwise or unlinkable presentation of Mission-bound authority works against that anchor and is therefore future work, not a v1 property (Section 16.1).¶

1.8. Conventions and Terminology

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

All JSON shown in this document is non-normative and illustrative; the member definitions in the surrounding text are authoritative.¶

Agent (Client):

The OAuth client acting on a user's behalf, identified by client_id. Agent identity is established per [I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth] or ordinary OAuth client authentication.¶

Subject:

The user or system on whose behalf the Mission is approved, identified by an (iss, sub) pair and carried in derived tokens' sub claim.¶

Approver:

The single accountable principal who approves the Mission at the approval event. Equal to the Subject for self-approval; different for administrator or delegated approval. This document records one accountable Approver; multi-party approval and the provenance of delegated approval authority are deferred (Section 6.2).¶

Mission Issuer (Authorization Server):

The OAuth AS that validates a Mission Intent, runs the approval event, records the Mission, and derives tokens. It is the Mission's issuer. "Mission Issuer", "issuer AS", "originating AS", and "AS" are used interchangeably in this document.¶

Resource AS:

An Authorization Server in another trust domain that honors a Mission it did not issue, minting its own tokens for its resources; it is never the Mission Issuer. Cross-domain projection is specified by the companion Mission Cross-Domain Projection profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

Mission Intent:

The structured description of the task the client submits (Section 4).¶

Authority Set:

The set of authorization_details entries the AS derives from a Mission Intent and the Approver approves (Section 5). "Authority Set" names these concrete entries; it does not mean an identity authority, a trust authority, a legal authority, or an issuing authority.¶

Mission:

The durable, immutable record created at the approval event (Section 7), identified by a Mission Identifier (Section 7.1).¶

Derived token:

An access token issued under a Mission, carrying its Mission-derived authority (the full Authority Set or a narrowed subset) as authorization_details and a mission claim (Section 8).¶

Mission-bound token:

An access token or refresh token issued under a Mission, carrying its authority and the mission claim (or bound server-side, for refresh tokens).¶

3.1. Principal Model

This document maps principals onto native OAuth constructs:¶

• The Agent is the OAuth client, referenced by client_id. Agent identity and credentialing are out of scope (see [I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth]).¶

• The Subject and Approver are each an (iss, sub) pair, matching the access token sub model of [RFC9068].¶

On a derived token the sub claim is the Subject's sub and the token iss is the AS; within the issuing AS's namespace this (iss, sub) pair is authoritative for the Subject, and Resource Servers authorize against it. The Subject's home issuer is recorded on the Mission as subject.iss for audit and is not carried on the token; this document defines no runtime lookup of it (there is no by-Mission status endpoint). Across trust domains, the companion's cross-domain grant conveys Subject identity to the Resource AS through its own subject-resolution claims ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]), not through a Mission lookup.¶

Issuer roles obey three invariants: a Mission has exactly one Mission Issuer, its issuer; a Resource AS never creates or alters a Mission; and a local token minted in another domain preserves the mission claim unchanged ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

Principals are recorded at the approval event and are immutable. Two principals are equal when their iss and sub are byte-equal. Dynamic delegation (the actors an agent delegates to during execution) is carried on derived tokens via the act chain (Section 11), not on the immutable Mission record. Richer subject identifier formats (for example, the formats of [RFC9493]) MAY be layered in future versions and are not required here.¶

3.2. Protocol Flow

 Agent (client)                       Mission Issuer (AS)
      |                                     |
      | 1. PAR: mission_intent ------------>| derive authority
      |<----------- request_uri ------------| (authz_details)
      |                                     |
      | 2. authorization request ---------->| Approver consents
      |                                     |   -> authority_hash
      |<-------------- code ----------------| -> Mission active
      |                                     |   (bound to the grant)
      |                                     |
      | 3. token request ------------------>| gate: active?
      |<----------- access token -----------| + authz_details
      |                                     |   + mission claim
      v

The flow then leaves the AS: (4) the agent calls the Resource Server with the token; the RS enforces the authorization_details statelessly and MAY check the mission claim, with no callback to the AS required. (5) A management revoke, or expires_at passing, moves the Mission to revoked or expired, after which the AS refuses further issuance and refresh; a deployment MAY additionally compose RFC 7009 [RFC7009] refresh-token revocation (Section 9.2). The end-to-end example (Appendix A) walks this flow with concrete messages.¶

4.1. Submission via PAR

A client MUST submit a Mission Intent through a Pushed Authorization Request [RFC9126] using the mission_intent request parameter. The parameter value is the UTF-8 JSON [RFC8259] serialization of the Mission Intent object, carried as an ordinary OAuth request-parameter value (form-encoded in the application/x-www-form-urlencoded PAR request body, like other OAuth parameters). The AS returns a request_uri as usual, which the client uses to start authorization. An AS that cannot parse mission_intent as a JSON object, or that parses it but finds it structurally invalid against this document's member definitions, MUST refuse the request with invalid_request.¶

A Mission Intent is closed at the top level: an AS MUST reject with invalid_request a Mission Intent containing a top-level member this document does not define. The top level is closed because its members feed approval rendering and the intent_hash commitment: an undefined member would enter what the Approver reads and what the anchor commits. Extension data belongs under controls, so deployment-defined semantics are explicit and cannot masquerade as core Intent semantics. This closure also keeps issuer-output members, such as a client-planted authority_hash, from entering through the Intent.¶

A different case is an Intent that is well-formed but from which the AS cannot derive a valid Authority Set (for example, an unsupported resource, action, or authorization details type, or a policy that bars the requested authority). In that case the AS SHOULD refuse with invalid_authorization_details ([RFC9396]), even though the client did not submit authorization_details directly. This lets a client distinguish a syntax error from an authority-derivation failure.¶

The Intent MUST arrive through PAR: an AS MUST reject with invalid_request a mission_intent presented on a front-channel authorization request that does not use a PAR-issued request_uri; a stray mission_intent on a request that redeems a request_uri is ignored, as specified below. The prohibition applies regardless of carriage: a mission_intent carried inside a signed request object is equally rejected; only PAR submission is accepted. PAR keeps the integrity-sensitive Intent off the untrusted front channel. Because mission_intent is untrusted client input that the AS records, derives from, and hashes, an AS MUST bound its total size and the lengths of its arrays, refusing an Intent that exceeds the deployment's limits with invalid_request, so an oversized Intent cannot exhaust the AS at rendering, derivation, or hashing. The limits are deployment-defined.¶

A client MUST NOT submit authorization_details directly together with mission_intent; the AS derives authorization details from the Intent (Section 5). A request carrying both MUST be refused with invalid_request. This prohibition governs the raw [RFC9396] request parameter; a client proposes concrete authority inside the Intent, through proposed_authority (Section 4). A client MAY submit scope and resource ([RFC8707]) values; the AS treats them as a requested subset and MUST NOT grant authority beyond what the Mission Intent yields.¶

For a Mission request, the parameters pushed via PAR are authoritative. The AS MUST ignore any mission_intent, authorization_details, scope, or resource presented on the front-channel authorization request that redeems the request_uri. The AS MUST NOT let such a front-channel value widen the authority derived from the pushed Intent.¶

A Mission Intent is untrusted client input. Trust enters only when the AS validates it and the Approver consents to the rendered result. The AS MUST treat the submitted Intent as a proposal, never as authority. The AS MUST derive authority and bound it by policy regardless of what the client submitted. How a client produces the Mission Intent (for example, a "Mission Shaper" that derives it from a natural-language instruction) is out of scope for this document.¶

5.1. Subset Rule

When the AS narrows the Authority Set for a derived token, a derived mission_resource_access entry A is a subset of a Mission entry B when:¶

1. A's effective resource set is contained in B's (resource_match, Section 5): when neither entry sets resource_match: "prefix", A.resource equals B.resource; when B is a prefix entry, A (whether exact or prefix) is contained when A.resource equals B.resource or extends its path at a path-segment boundary; a prefix A is never contained in an exact B.¶

2. Every A.actions value is within some B.actions value: a value is within an equal value; a literal action is within a family whose name it extends at a segment boundary (invoices.read is within invoices.*); a family is within a reference family when its own name extends the reference's name at a segment boundary (invoices.q3.* is within invoices.*). A family is never within a literal action.¶

3. For every key K in B.constraints, K MUST also be present in A.constraints, and A's value MUST be no broader than B's under K's subset rule: the specification-defined rule when K is a Common Constraint (Section 5.2), the deployment-defined comparison otherwise. A key present in B but absent from A is treated as the broadest possible value and therefore fails this test. In short, constraints MUST NOT be dropped, only added or tightened.¶

The AS MUST refuse to derive an entry that is not a subset of some Mission Authority Set entry.¶

Authority under a Mission MUST NOT widen after the approval event: a request that exceeds the Authority Set on any dimension (a new resource, action, actor, delegation path, longer duration, or constraint relaxation) is refused under this rule, and broader authority requires a fresh approval event, either a new Mission or a successor per the companion [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-expansion].¶

Resource containment under a prefix reference is compared after RFC 3986 [RFC3986] syntax-based normalization of both URIs: lowercase the scheme and host, remove a default port, decode percent-encoded octets of unreserved characters, and remove dot-segments. This normalization applies to comparison only, never to hashing: anchor computation (Section 6.3, Section 6.4) remains byte-exact over the recorded values and is untouched by this rule.¶

The default comparison is deliberately flat: resource matches by exact equality and a literal action by array membership. Hierarchy is opt-in and closed to the two forms above: resource_match: "prefix" for resource containment and .* action families for action containment (Section 5). A deployment that uses neither retains the flat behavior unchanged.¶

The delegation member is policy, not authority, and is not part of this comparison (Section 11.3). A derived entry's delegation, when present, MUST NOT be broader than the parent entry's: its max_depth MUST be no greater and its allowed_delegates MUST be no wider. A derived entry MUST NOT introduce delegation where the parent entry has none.¶

5.2. Common Constraints

A constraints member name (Section 5) is either a specification-defined Common Constraint or a deployment-defined key. Common Constraints give independently developed deployments one vocabulary they interpret, narrow, and compare identically; further Common Constraints are defined by specification under the naming convention of Section 17.7.¶

A Common Constraint definition fixes:¶

• Value syntax: the JSON [RFC8259] value type and any additional rules.¶

• Subset rule: how a candidate value is judged no broader than a reference value, used by the subset comparison of Section 5.1.¶

• Intersection rule: how two values for the same key combine; the result MUST be no broader than either operand.¶

A constraints member whose name is a specification-defined Common Constraint is interpreted per its definition. Any other member name remains deployment-defined and is interpreted only within the issuing deployment; a consumer that does not recognize it MUST fail closed (Section 8.2).¶

This document defines the initial Common Constraints:¶

• max_amount (object): a per-action ceiling on a monetary amount. The value is an object with two members: amount (REQUIRED, a string containing a decimal number) and currency (REQUIRED, an ISO 4217 [ISO4217] currency code). Subset: no broader when the currency values are equal and the candidate amount is less than or equal to the reference amount, compared in decimal value space; differing currencies fail the comparison (no conversion is defined). Intersection: when the currency values are equal, the value with the smaller amount; differing currencies have no intersection and the combination fails.¶

• resource_issued_after (string, an RFC 3339 [RFC3339] date-time): the action applies only to resources issued at or after this instant. Subset: no broader when greater than or equal to the reference. Intersection: the later instant.¶

• resource_issued_before (string, an RFC 3339 [RFC3339] date-time): the action applies only to resources issued at or before this instant. Subset: no broader when less than or equal to the reference. Intersection: the earlier instant. The resource_ qualifier in both names marks that the window bounds resource issuance, not token issuance.¶

• tenant (string): the action applies only to resources of the named tenant. Subset: no broader when equal to the reference value. Intersection: the common value when the two are equal; otherwise there is no intersection and the combination fails.¶

• recipient_domain (string, a DNS name): the action applies only to recipients within the named domain. Subset: no broader when equal to the reference or a DNS subdomain of it. Intersection: the narrower value when one is equal to or a subdomain of the other; otherwise there is no intersection and the combination fails.¶

These comparisons are in value space, not lexical: max_amount amount members are compared as the decimal numbers the strings contain, so "500", "500.0", and "500.00" are equal; resource_issued_after and resource_issued_before values are compared as the instants they denote after normalization to UTC, so two RFC 3339 representations of the same instant that differ only in timezone offset or trailing subsecond zeros are equal; recipient_domain values are compared as DNS names, case-insensitively and on whole labels, so mail.example.com is within example.com and not-example.net is not. A Common Constraint definition MUST fix its subset and intersection in value-space terms, so that independent deployments compute the same result for the same values and the subset rule of Section 5.1 is reproducible.¶

A numeric constraint value MUST lie within the range JCS [RFC8785] serializes exactly. Monetary amounts avoid that hazard by construction: max_amount carries its amount as a string containing a decimal number, paired with an ISO 4217 [ISO4217] currency code, and a future Common Constraint for a monetary value SHOULD reuse this shape rather than a JSON number.¶

5.3. Other Authorization Details Types

mission_resource_access is the only type this document defines, but the Authority Set MAY include other AS-supported [RFC9396] authorization_details types when an audience consumes them. ("Supported" here means the AS recognizes and documents the type, as advertised by authorization_details_types_supported (Section 13); RFC 9396 establishes no IANA registry of type identifiers.) The Mission apparatus is type-agnostic toward such entries:¶

• they are committed by authority_hash and gated on Mission state exactly as mission_resource_access entries are;¶

• narrowing and delegation use the subset semantics the type defines (Section 5.1, Section 11.3). A type whose subset and delegation semantics the AS does not understand MUST NOT be delegated, audience-projected to a Resource AS, or narrowed: the AS cannot prove a transformed copy is still a subset of what was approved. Such an entry MAY be issued only to its original approved audience, carried exactly as approved, and MUST NOT appear in a delegated token or in a cross-domain grant ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]);¶

• evaluating the entry against a concrete request is the runtime layer's responsibility (Section 15.5), not the AS's.¶

This lets policy-language profiles compose without this document defining them: for example, an entry carrying a Cedar policy set ([I-D.draft-cecchetti-oauth-rar-cedar]), or an analogous AuthZEN policy entry, for an audience that evaluates it. The AS derives such an entry from the Mission Intent and bounds it by the Intent like any other, but treats the carried policy largely opaquely; the Resource Server or Policy Decision Point (PDP) evaluates it at request time.¶

Example (non-normative): an Authority Set with a Cedar policy entry for a finance audience that consumes Cedar, alongside a mission_resource_access entry for a calendar audience that does not. The Cedar policySet is abbreviated:¶

[
  {
    "type": "account_information",
    "rarFormat": "cedar",
    "policySet": "permit(principal, action, resource) when {...};"
  },
  {
    "type": "mission_resource_access",
    "resource": "https://calendar.example.com",
    "actions": ["events.read"],
    "constraints": { "window_days": 30 }
  }
]

Both entries are committed by the one authority_hash and bound to the Mission. The Cedar entry is evaluated by the finance audience's PDP; the mission_resource_access entry is enforced as in Section 8. Because the Cedar profile defines no subset or delegation rule over policy sets, the AS carries the Cedar entry as approved rather than narrowing it, and it MUST NOT appear in a delegated token or cross-domain grant. Delegation controls on other entries, such as the mission_resource_access entry, apply to those entries only.¶

5.4. Modeling Tools and Function Calls

This section is non-normative guidance. A "tool" an agent invokes, such as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool or a function call, is modeled as a mission_resource_access entry. No separate entry type is needed, and the rules above (derivation, subset, delegation, authority_hash) apply unchanged.¶

The mapping is:¶

• resource is the tool provider. For an MCP tool it is the MCP server's URL. The MCP authorization model ([MCP]) makes the server an OAuth 2.0 resource server, so this is the resource identifier a token is audience-bound to.¶

• actions are the tool names the task needs at that provider. Authorizing a tool is authorizing its name as an action, which lines up with MCP filtering its tool list by the caller's granted authority and routing each tool call for authorization.¶

• constraints carry machine-actionable bounds on a tool's arguments, for example an amount ceiling or a recipient domain (the max_amount and recipient_domain Common Constraints, Section 5.2). Like all constraints, they are committed by authority_hash and carried to the point of use, but they are evaluated against the concrete call arguments by a runtime enforcement layer, not at issuance (Section 15.5).¶

For example, a Mission authorized to read invoices and post small adjustments through a finance MCP server, and to send messages through a messaging MCP server, derives:¶

[
  { "type": "mission_resource_access",
    "resource": "https://finance.example.com/mcp",
    "actions": ["query_invoices", "post_adjustment"],
    "constraints": {
      "max_amount": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" }
    } },
  { "type": "mission_resource_access",
    "resource": "https://mail.example.com/mcp",
    "actions": ["send_message"],
    "constraints": { "recipient_domain": "example.com" } }
]

Delegation to a sub-agent works unchanged: add a delegation member to a tool entry (Section 11.3). For example, an entry a sub-agent of type ai_agent may invoke at depth 1, narrowed to the read tool only:¶

{ "type": "mission_resource_access",
  "resource": "https://finance.example.com/mcp",
  "actions": ["query_invoices"],
  "delegation": {
    "max_depth": 1,
    "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
  } }

What this profile does not provide for tools is a typed, attenuable per-argument constraint grammar: narrowing one tool's argument schema against another (for example, amount in a range, recipient in a one_of set) as the grant is derived or delegated. Argument bounds here are the same flat, carried constraints used for any resource, evaluated at runtime. Structured per-argument attenuation ([I-D.draft-niyikiza-oauth-attenuating-agent-tokens], with object capability systems such as UCAN as prior art) is a richer primitive deferred to future work; it would extend the delegation and subset model of this document (Section 11.3, Section 5.1) rather than introduce a new entry type.¶

6.1. Binding the Mission to the Grant

At the approval event the AS binds the Mission to the authorization grant it issues: the authorization code, and the refresh token issued from it. The binding is server-side and is what "the referenced Mission" in Section 9 refers to. At each subsequent derivation the AS resolves the Mission from the grant the client presents: the authorization code at the token endpoint (the initial exchange uses grant_type=authorization_code), the refresh token on refresh, or the Mission-bound subject_token on Token Exchange (the actor_token identifies the delegate, Section 11). It then applies the gating of Section 9. A client does not supply mission_id to obtain a derivation; an AS MUST NOT derive Mission-bound authority from a client-supplied mission_id, because the grant, not the identifier, determines the Mission. When the authorization code expires unredeemed, no derivation is possible under the Mission; the AS SHOULD revoke the Mission or allow it to expire.¶

A client learns its mission_id from the mission claim's id on each issued token (Section 8.1) or from the token response. This document defines mission_id as an OPTIONAL token-endpoint response parameter: a string carrying the Mission Identifier, returned alongside the issued token. It is an informational reference only: presenting it authorizes nothing (Section 9), and a client MUST NOT derive authority from it.¶

6.2. Single Accountable Approver

This document records exactly one approver: the accountable principal who approved the Mission. Two richer patterns are deliberately out of scope and deferred:¶

• Multi-party approval (M-of-N or dual control), where more than one principal must approve. The number of approvers is orthogonal to the consent commitment: however many principals approve the same rendered Authority Set, the authority_hash is identical, as is every token derived from it. Multi-party approval raises the assurance of how approval was obtained; it does not change the artifacts this document produces. A deployment requiring dual control today can obtain the additional approvals out of band and record one accountable Approver under the same authority_hash; this document simply does not natively represent the co-approvers.¶

• Approval-authority provenance (the standing policy or delegation an administrator or headless approval traces back to). This is governance state about who stands behind a delegated approval, not part of binding tokens to approved authority, and is left to a governance layer.¶

6.3. Integrity Anchors

Both anchors are computed the same way over a domain-separated, issuer-bound envelope:¶

1. Construct the envelope, where typ selects the committed object and value is that object:¶

   {
     "typ": "<mission-intent | mission-authority-set>",
     "iss": "<the AS issuer URL>",
     "value": <the committed object>
   }
   

   ¶

   For intent_hash, typ is mission-intent and value is the approved Mission Intent object. For authority_hash, typ is mission-authority-set and value is the Authority Set as a JSON array of entries.¶

2. Canonicalize the envelope with JCS [RFC8785].¶

3. Compute SHA-256 [RFC6234] over the canonical bytes.¶

4. Encode as sha-256: followed by the base64url, no-padding, encoding of the digest.¶

The typ field domain-separates the two anchors so a digest of one object can never be mistaken for the other. The iss binding prevents a committed object from being transplanted across Authorization Servers.¶

The typ value space is an extension point (Section 12): additional committed objects use this same envelope with a new typ and the canonicalization below. This document defines no registry of typ values; each committing specification defines its own and relies on the typ domain separation. To keep that domain separation safe without a registry, a new typ value MUST be a collision-resistant name (for example, a short name prefixed within a namespace the defining profile controls, following the Collision-Resistant Name guidance of [RFC7519] Section 4.2). The mission- prefixed values defined by profiles that extend this document share an author-coordinated namespace for this reason.¶

SHA-256 is the only digest algorithm this document defines; the sha-256: prefix identifies it. Algorithm agility is future work.¶

A verifier MUST reject an integrity anchor whose algorithm prefix it does not recognize. A verifier MUST NOT treat an unrecognized prefix as sha-256. This ensures that adding an algorithm later cannot be exploited as a downgrade.¶

6.4. Canonicalization Rules

JCS [RFC8785] alone does not make two implementations agree on every byte. The following rules close the remaining gaps; they apply to computing an anchor and to comparing committed values:¶

• The committed value is exactly the object the AS recorded on the Mission: the approved intent for intent_hash, the authority_set for authority_hash. An auditor reproduces a digest from the record alone.¶

• The AS MUST reject an input object containing duplicate JSON member names before canonicalization; such input is invalid.¶

• JCS does not reorder array elements, and this document defines no element sorting, so array order is significant. The AS MUST emit each array in a fixed, reproducible order; that order is part of the canonical form.¶

• URI-valued members are compared byte-for-byte unless a member's definition specifies a normalization. The only normalization this document defines is the RFC 3986 [RFC3986] comparison of the resource-containment test (Section 5.1), which applies to that comparison alone: the default resource equality test of Section 5.1 remains an exact match, and anchor computation is always byte-exact over the recorded values.¶

Test vectors for both anchors are provided in Appendix B.¶

7.1. Mission Identifier Format

A Mission Identifier is an opaque URL-safe ASCII string of [A-Za-z0-9_-] characters, with at least 128 bits of entropy, carrying no semantic content. It MUST NOT be reused. The record and the mission claim carry it as id; a surface that references a Mission from outside carries it as mission_id, as in the token-response parameter (Section 6.1).¶

7.2. Worked Example

{
  "id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
  "issuer": "https://as.example.com",
  "state": "active",
  "intent": { "goal": "Reconcile Q3 invoices ...",
    "resources": ["https://erp.example.com"],
    "expires_at": "2026-12-31T23:59:59Z" },
  "authority_set": [
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["invoices.read"],
      "constraints": {
        "resource_issued_after": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
        "resource_issued_before": "2026-09-30T23:59:59Z"
      },
      "delegation": {
        "max_depth": 2,
        "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
      } },
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["journal-entries.write"],
      "constraints": {
        "max_amount": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" }
      } }
  ],
  "authority_hash":
    "sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ",
  "intent_hash":
    "sha-256:wQ7p4LHnX9Md0LqJ6sZJ8b8mZ3rN2xT5pV4lE6sQqYY",
  "subject": { "iss": "https://idp.example.com",
    "sub": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR" },
  "approver": { "iss": "https://idp.example.com",
    "sub": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR" },
  "client_id": "s6BhdRkqt3",
  "policy_version": "deploy-policy:v17",
  "approval_event_id": "ape_8K2nP4qV9rL3tY6sB1z",
  "created_at": "2026-10-15T14:32:11Z",
  "expires_at": "2026-12-31T23:59:59Z"
}

8.1. The Mission Claim

The mission claim is a JSON object:¶

id:

REQUIRED. A string. The Mission Identifier (Section 7.1).¶

issuer:

REQUIRED. A string. The Mission's issuer (Section 7). A credential's iss names the party that minted it; mission.issuer names the party that approved and serves the Mission, and the two deliberately differ for tokens minted in another trust domain ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

authority_hash:

REQUIRED. A string. The Mission's authority_hash, binding the token to the consented authority.¶

The mission claim is an open object (Section 12): additional members MAY appear alongside the three above. This document defines no registry of mission members. A companion profile of this document MAY use short member names coordinated with it; any other extension member MUST use a collision-resistant name (for example, a name in a namespace the extension controls, per the Collision-Resistant Name guidance of [RFC7519] Section 4.2) and is defined by the profile that introduces it. A consumer MUST ignore members it does not understand and MUST NOT use any additional member to grant or widen authority; the three members above remain authoritative.¶

Example decoded token payload:¶

{
  "iss": "https://as.example.com",
  "sub": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR",
  "aud": "https://erp.example.com",
  "client_id": "s6BhdRkqt3",
  "iat": 1797840000,
  "exp": 1797840300,
  "jti": "at_9Kp2vN7sR1tY8mZ3qX5b",
  "authorization_details": [
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["invoices.read"],
      "constraints": {
        "resource_issued_after": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
        "resource_issued_before": "2026-09-30T23:59:59Z"
      },
      "delegation": {
        "max_depth": 2,
        "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
      } },
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["journal-entries.write"],
      "constraints": {
        "max_amount": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" }
      } }
  ],
  "cnf": { "jkt": "0ZcOCORZNYy-DWpqq30jZyJGHTN0d2HglBV3uiguA4I" },
  "mission": {
    "id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
    "issuer": "https://as.example.com",
    "authority_hash":
      "sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ"
  }
}

8.2. Resource Server Enforcement

A Resource Server enforces from the token alone; no call to the AS is required. A Resource Server:¶

• MUST validate the JWT per [RFC9068] and verify any sender-constraint binding (cnf).¶

• MUST treat authorization_details as the authoritative expression of authority and enforce the entries whose resource it serves, permitting only the listed actions subject to constraints.¶

• MUST fail closed on any constraints key it does not understand, or understands but cannot enforce, in an entry whose resource it serves: it MUST refuse the request (for example, a 403 with insufficient_scope [RFC6750], or the deployment's usual insufficient-authority error) rather than grant access while ignoring the key. A constraints member narrows authority, so treating an unenforceable key as absent would silently widen the grant; an RS MUST NOT reduce a constraint to disclosure-only.¶

• MUST NOT, when a token also carries scope, grant on the basis of a scope value any access broader than the corresponding authorization_details entry permits; in particular, scope MUST NOT be used to bypass a constraint carried only in authorization_details.¶

• MUST NOT treat client_id as the identity of the acting party on a delegated token. This profile keeps client_id equal to the Mission's approved agent on every derived token (Section 11); the immediate actor is the outermost act. An RS that authorizes or logs the caller MUST process the act chain to identify the acting party, or it will attribute a delegate's action to the approved agent.¶

• This act-processing requirement binds a Mission-aware RS. Because a Mission-unaware [RFC9068] RS reads client_id as the immediate client and would misattribute, a deployment SHOULD NOT route delegated tokens to an RS that authorizes or logs on client_id without processing act.¶

• MAY, for a Mission-governed resource, be configured to require the mission claim, and MUST then reject a token that lacks it with invalid_token. This prevents downgrade by omission: where the same AS also issues ordinary tokens, a token bearing equivalent authorization_details but no mission claim is governed by no Mission state, revocation, or consent commitment, and MUST NOT be accepted where Mission governance is required. A protected resource MAY advertise this requirement through the mission_bound_authorization_required protected resource metadata member (Section 14).¶

• MAY treat the mission claim as audit and correlation context.¶

• SHOULD, when serving Mission-bound requests, log the mission claim's id and the token jti with each served request, so its access logs join to Mission evidence.¶

• MAY recompute authority_hash (Section 6.3). A Resource Server that performs it recomputes the anchor over the full Authority Set it independently holds, compares the result to mission.authority_hash, and MUST reject on mismatch. It additionally verifies that each carried authorization_details entry is a subset (Section 5.1) of that held set. A narrowed token matches by the subset test, never by hashing its carried entries: the anchor is computed only over the full Authority Set, so a Resource Server MUST NOT recompute it from a token's carried subset.¶

• MAY, where the AS offers it, introspect the token (Section 10) to observe the Mission's current state per request rather than relying on the token lifetime to bound revocation latency. An RS that introspects MUST still verify the token's sender-constraint (cnf) locally and MUST NOT treat an active: true result as proof the caller holds the bound key; the AS does not check possession at introspection (Section 10).¶

A Mission-unaware Resource Server that authorizes only from scope still operates within the Mission at the coarse scope level, because the AS derived and bounded that scope by the Authority Set (Section 8); but it does not enforce the per-entry constraints, which scope cannot carry. A deployment that relies on those constraints MUST route the protected operation through a Resource Server that enforces authorization_details (or the runtime layer that evaluates them).¶

9.1. Issuance Gating

The AS MUST refuse to derive a token, at the token endpoint, on refresh, and on Token Exchange ([RFC8693]), unless the referenced Mission is active. Issuance against a revoked or expired Mission MUST fail with invalid_grant. Because derivation is gated on Mission state, revoking or expiring a Mission stops all further authority for the task, including refresh. The active check MUST be evaluated atomically with issuance, as the derivation-count check already is, so a revocation serialized before an issuance is honored by that issuance.¶

When the Mission Intent sets controls.max_derivations, the AS MUST maintain a per-Mission count of derivations and MUST refuse with invalid_grant any derivation that would exceed the bound. A derivation is one issuance operation the issuer AS performs for a single request: the initial authorization-code exchange, a refresh, a Token Exchange, or a cross-domain grant issuance ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]). Each counts as exactly one, regardless of how many artifacts it emits: a code exchange that returns both an access token and a refresh token is one derivation, and a refresh that rotates both is one. The exact rules:¶

• A derivation that fails, including one refused for exceeding the bound, MUST NOT be counted.¶

• The check and increment MUST be atomic with issuance, so concurrent derivations cannot collectively exceed the bound.¶

• The count covers only derivations the issuer AS performs. Tokens another domain mints locally under the Mission are not counted by the issuer, which cannot observe them; the cross-domain issuance that authorized them was counted once, and the local issuer bounds its own minting by its policy ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

The AS maintains this count as internal bookkeeping; it is operational state, not part of the immutable Mission record.¶

Derived tokens SHOULD be short-lived so that a transition to revoked or expired takes effect promptly without per-request revocation checks.¶

9.2. Revocation

A Mission is revoked when the AS receives an authorized revocation for it. A deployment MUST provide an authenticated means for the Subject, the Approver, or an administrator to revoke a Mission by mission_id, independent of possession of any token (so a Mission can be stopped even when no refresh token is held).¶

This document does not define the wire shape of that operation. Revocation is a management-plane action by a party in the AS's own trust domain, not a cross-party protocol exchange, and the lifecycle gate that makes it effective (Section 9, Section 10) already rides on existing endpoints, so no standardized endpoint is required for interoperability. A standardized Mission management API, with suspend/resume/complete operations, is specified separately by Mission Status [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]; this document does not require it.¶

A deployment MAY additionally treat [RFC7009] revocation of a Mission's refresh token as revoking the Mission. A deployment MUST NOT couple routine token revocation to Mission revocation unless it documents that behavior. Already-issued access tokens remain valid until they expire; a deployment requiring lower cutoff latency SHOULD use short token lifetimes.¶

The stateless baseline needs no status surface: a token is a self-contained authorization and verification is stateless. A deployment MAY additionally offer token introspection (Section 10) so a Resource Server can observe Mission state per request and cut off a revoked Mission without waiting out the token lifetime. A canonical Mission Status surface (keyed by mission_id) and signed status responses are specified separately as an OPTIONAL companion profile by Mission Status [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]; this document does not require them.¶

Token validity and Mission validity are distinct: a token can outlive a transition of its Mission, by at most the token lifetime. A deployment whose consumers rely on Mission state beyond a token's lifetime SHOULD offer introspection (Section 10) or the Mission Status companion, so an authorized party can determine the Mission's current state rather than inferring it from token validity.¶

10.1. Caller Authorization and Minimization

The introspection endpoint is protected per [RFC7662]. The AS:¶

• MUST authenticate the calling party.¶

• MUST return Mission data only to a caller authorized to receive it, in particular a Resource Server that is an audience of the token.¶

• MUST audience-filter the response, returning the authorization_details entries and Mission data relevant to the caller's audience and not disclosing entries addressed to other audiences (Section 8).¶

Because this profile returns the mission member and mission.state even when active is false (diverging from the [RFC7662] SHOULD NOT against disclosing detail for inactive tokens), the AS MUST apply this same authorization and minimization to that data and MUST NOT reveal Mission detail to an unauthorized introspection caller.¶

10.2. Composite Active State

The introspection active member reflects the composite authorization, not the token in isolation. The AS MUST return active: true only when the access token is itself valid (valid signature, unexpired, and not individually revoked) AND the Mission is active. The AS does not verify the token's sender-constraint (cnf) at introspection: proof of possession is checked by the Resource Server when the token is presented, not by the AS over an introspection call, so active: true is not by itself evidence the caller holds the bound key.¶

When the token is otherwise valid but the Mission is revoked or expired, the AS MUST return active: false and include mission.state giving the reason, so a Resource Server can distinguish a dead Mission from a bad token. (This deviates from the [RFC7662] SHOULD NOT against including members when active is false.) A Mission transition does not by itself revoke the token as an individual credential; introspection reports the composite authorization as inactive.¶

10.3. Only the Issuer Reports Mission State

An AS MUST NOT include mission.state in an introspection response unless it holds the Mission, that is, unless it is the Mission issuer. Introspection at a non-issuer Resource AS, which returns the claim-shape members only and never state, is specified by the companion ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

This is token introspection: it answers "is this token's authorization still good," keyed by the token presented. The canonical Mission Status surface (keyed by mission_id) remains out of scope (Section 9.2).¶

10.4. Examples

While the Mission is active, the response is the standard [RFC7662] body plus the mission member. The canonical ERP token (Section 8.1), introspected at the issuer AS:¶

{
  "active": true,
  "iss": "https://as.example.com",
  "sub": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR",
  "client_id": "s6BhdRkqt3",
  "aud": "https://erp.example.com",
  "exp": 1797840300,
  "authorization_details": [
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["invoices.read"],
      "constraints": {
        "resource_issued_after": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
        "resource_issued_before": "2026-09-30T23:59:59Z"
      },
      "delegation": {
        "max_depth": 2,
        "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
      } },
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["journal-entries.write"],
      "constraints": {
        "max_amount": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" }
      } }
  ],
  "mission": {
    "id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
    "issuer": "https://as.example.com",
    "authority_hash":
      "sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ",
    "state": "active"
  }
}

The same token after the Mission is revoked, reported per the composite-active rule (Section 10.2):¶

{
  "active": false,
  "mission": {
    "id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
    "issuer": "https://as.example.com",
    "authority_hash":
      "sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ",
    "state": "revoked"
  }
}

11.1. Design Alternative: Rebinding client_id to the Delegate

A rejected alternative rebinds client_id to the immediate delegate on each hop, the plain [RFC9068] reading in which client_id names the immediate client. Rebinding loses the stable approved-agent binding that every consumer of a derived token can verify: each downstream token presents as a new client rather than an actor executing within the approved Mission, and joining who was approved to who executed requires reconstructing the hop history from issuance records rather than reading both from the token. Rebinding is also safe only where every Resource Server processes act anyway, since the delegation history lives nowhere else; that is exactly the discipline this profile's chosen design requires, so rebinding buys no relaxation. The operational rule of Section 8.2 therefore holds regardless of the binding choice: a Resource Server that authorizes or logs the caller MUST process the act chain, and a deployment SHOULD NOT route delegated tokens to a Resource Server that authorizes or logs on client_id without processing act.¶

11.2. Self-Exchange Down-Scoping

An agent MAY present its own Mission-bound access token as the subject_token of a Token Exchange ([RFC8693]) with no actor, to obtain a narrowed token (for example, a single-audience one). The result MUST be a subset (Section 5.1) of the presented token's authority, carries the same mission claim (Section 8.1), and adds no act chain. It is a derivation and is gated on the Mission being active (Section 9). Because it names no actor, it does not delegate: it re-scopes the agent's own authority downward.¶

11.3. Delegation Constraints

What may be delegated, how far, and to whom is governed per Authority Set entry by the entry's optional delegation member (Section 5). Because the policy lives in the entry, it is committed by authority_hash with the rest of the Authority Set and travels with the entries wherever they are carried, including across a cross-domain projection ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]), needing no separate mechanism.¶

Delegation depth. The delegation depth of a token is the number of actors in its act chain (the nesting depth of the act claim), counted from the approved agent: the agent's own non-delegated token is depth 0, the first delegate is depth 1, and each further delegate adds 1. The depth checked against max_depth is that of the token being issued, computed after appending the new outermost actor, not the depth of the delegating token. A credential projected across a trust domain carries no act chain and enters the target domain at depth 0 ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

Per-entry enforcement. When the AS issues a token to a delegate (the actor that becomes the outermost act) at delegation depth d, it includes a Mission Authority Set entry in the delegated token's authorization_details only if all of the following hold:¶

1. the entry carries a delegation member (otherwise it is non-delegable, which is the default);¶

2. d is less than or equal to the entry's delegation.max_depth; and¶

3. the delegate is permitted by delegation.allowed_delegates, or that member is absent.¶

An entry failing any of these narrows out of the delegated token, consistent with the subset rule (Section 5.1). The delegation member is policy, not authority, and is not part of the subset comparison; surviving entries are carried with their delegation member intact so the next hop is evaluated the same way.¶

Matching allowed_delegates. Each entry is a matcher object modeled on the RFC 8693 may_act actor object ([RFC8693] Section 4.4): where may_act names a single party eligible to act on a token, allowed_delegates is a per-Authority-Set-entry list of such matchers, generalized to actor-type classes. A { "sub": ... } matcher permits a specific delegate by client identifier; a { "sub_profile": ... } matcher permits any actor of that type (for example, ai_agent). An actor's sub_profile MAY carry multiple space-separated values; a { "sub_profile": ... } matcher is satisfied when its value is among the actor's values. A deployment can thus permit a specific client, a class of actors, or both, and a delegate is permitted if it matches any entry. The AS MUST authenticate the delegate at the Token Exchange and assert the actor's sub and sub_profile itself. A self-asserted sub_profile MUST NOT satisfy a matcher; otherwise a client could claim any actor type to bypass the constraint.¶

A { "sub": ... } matcher is a client identifier in the issuing AS's namespace and is not portable across a trust domain; how a Resource AS evaluates conveyed matchers, failing closed and narrowing out any sub matcher it cannot resolve, is specified by the companion ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶

Empty result. If narrowing leaves no entries for the delegate, the AS MUST refuse with invalid_target ([RFC8693] Section 2.2.2) rather than issue a token with empty authority: the requested delegation has no authority to carry, while the subject grant itself remains valid for other exchanges.¶

The Resource Server enforces none of this. Delegation constraints are applied by the AS at issuance; a Resource Server sees only the already-narrowed authorization_details and enforces those as usual (Section 8).¶

11.4. Worked Example: Delegated Token

Suppose the Mission's Authority Set has two entries on the ERP: invoices.read, delegable to ai_agent actors through depth 2; and journal-entries.write, which carries no delegation member and is therefore non-delegable. The approved agent s6BhdRkqt3 delegates to sub-agent tool-runner-7, an ai_agent, at depth 1. The read entry is permitted (depth 1 <= 2, ai_agent allowed) and the write entry narrows out. The decoded delegated access token:¶

{
  "iss": "https://as.example.com",
  "sub": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR",
  "aud": "https://erp.example.com",
  "client_id": "s6BhdRkqt3",
  "iat": 1797840600,
  "exp": 1797840900,
  "jti": "at_3qX5bN7sR1tY8mZ9Kp2v",
  "authorization_details": [
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["invoices.read"],
      "constraints": {
        "resource_issued_after": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
        "resource_issued_before": "2026-09-30T23:59:59Z"
      },
      "delegation": {
        "max_depth": 2,
        "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
      } }
  ],
  "act": {
    "sub": "tool-runner-7",
    "iss": "https://as.example.com",
    "sub_profile": "ai_agent"
  },
  "cnf": { "jkt": "qVx7y2N0p4Lq9Md3sZJ8b8mZ3rN2xT5pV4lE6sQqYY" },
  "mission": {
    "id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
    "issuer": "https://as.example.com",
    "authority_hash":
      "sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ"
  }
}

sub is still the user and client_id is still the approved agent; tool-runner-7 appears only as the actor. The cnf is tool-runner-7's own key, not the agent's, so this token cannot be replayed as the agent. The non-delegable write entry was dropped; the read entry survives, carrying its delegation member so a further hop can be evaluated: a depth-3 delegate, or a non-ai_agent one, would narrow it out too. The mission claim is unchanged.¶

15.1. Consent Binding

The security goal of this document is that a user's approval of a task bounds every token derived for it. The authority_hash is the mechanism: it commits the exact Authority Set the Approver consented to, and every derived token carries it in the mission claim. An AS MUST compute authority_hash over the same Authority Set it rendered for consent, and MUST re-render and re-consent if that set changes (Section 6). authority_hash commits the full Authority Set, while a derived token may carry a narrowed subset, so a Resource Server cannot in general recompute it from the token alone. Recomputation is OPTIONAL. A Resource Server that performs it recomputes the anchor over the full Authority Set it independently holds, compares the result to mission.authority_hash, and MUST reject on mismatch; it additionally verifies that each carried authorization_details entry is a subset (Section 5.1) of that held set. A narrowed token matches by that subset test, never by hashing its carried entries: the anchor is defined only over the full set. A Resource Server that does not hold the full Authority Set treats authority_hash as a whole-Mission audit and correlation anchor ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]) and enforces the token's authorization_details directly (Section 8).¶

intent_hash extends the same protection to the task itself: it commits the approved Mission Intent, so an auditor can detect any later alteration of the recorded task, independently of the authority derived from it. The two anchors are domain-separated (Section 6.3); neither is a substitute for the other.¶

The task and the authority are committed separately, rather than folded into one hash over the whole Mission, because they are distinct objects with distinct uses. authority_hash commits what a Resource Server enforces and what a cross-domain projection carries, so it MUST be verifiable from a token that conveys only the authority, without the Intent. intent_hash commits the task as audit material, tamper-evident even where the authority is projected without the Intent traveling with it. One combined hash could not serve both a token that carries authority alone and an auditor that holds the task alone.¶

Neither anchor proves the Approver understood the rendered task, nor that the AS rendered it faithfully; they commit what the AS recorded, and make post-hoc tampering of those records detectable.¶

This profile commits the task (intent_hash) and the authority (authority_hash) the Approver consented to, but deliberately does not commit the rendered consent disclosure itself: the locale, disclosure-template version, and material notices the Approver was shown are not bound by any anchor here. Because of this gap, a buggy or malicious rendering layer could mislead the Approver, showing a narrower or different task than the Authority Set actually committed, without leaving any committed trace. A deployment whose Missions carry high-risk authority SHOULD therefore record presentation-level audit evidence: for example, a hash over the exact consent disclosure rendered to the Approver, retained so the disclosure shown can be reconstructed and audited after the fact. Binding this on the wire (a consent_rendering_hash over a structured consent-disclosure object) is specified as an OPTIONAL companion profile by Mission Consent Evidence [I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-consent-evidence]; an AS that does not implement it MAY record equivalent evidence out of band. As that profile makes explicit, such a commitment binds the structured disclosure the AS records, not the pixels actually presented; it narrows this gap for audit but does not close it.¶

15.2. Mission Drift

Because issuance is gated on Mission state and bounded by the Authority Set, an agent cannot escalate beyond the approved task by acquiring additional tokens: every derived token is a subset of the approved authority (Section 5.1), and no token can be derived once the Mission is revoked or expired. Deployments SHOULD keep derived token lifetimes short so state transitions take effect promptly.¶

15.3. Downgrade by Omission

A token bearing equivalent authorization_details but no mission claim is governed by no Mission state, revocation, or consent commitment. A deployment that designates a resource Mission-governed MUST NOT issue tokens for that resource outside a Mission, except under documented policy exceptions. On the enforcement side, a Resource Server for such a resource rejects a token lacking the mission claim (Section 8.2), and MAY advertise the requirement through mission_bound_authorization_required (Section 14).¶

15.4. Prompt Injection and the Exfiltration Leg

An agent that reads attacker-influenceable content can be prompt-injected; this profile assumes that and does not try to make the agent immune. Injection is dangerous when one agent combines access to private data, exposure to untrusted content, and the ability to communicate externally; the robust defense is architectural, constraining one of those, not making the model resistant.¶

This profile constrains the data-access leg: a Mission narrows authority from everything the agent's standing credentials allow to the resources the approved task needs, and per-task Missions (Section 1.5) shrink the blast radius further. It contributes one thing against the untrusted-content leg: purpose and success_criteria are inert, granting, widening, and gating no authority, and goal shapes authority only through the pre-approval derivation whose result the Approver reads and consents to (Section 4, Section 5); authority is fixed at the approval event, so injected text cannot talk an approved Mission into expanding itself.¶

This profile does not constrain the external-communication leg and provides no information-flow control. It models authority over resources and actions, not how an agent uses authority it holds: within an approved Authority Set, an injected agent can read what the Mission permits and write to a sink the Mission permits, and the flat subset and constraint model cannot express "may read secrets, may write documents, but not write secrets into documents." Constraining exfiltration by a compromised agent is the runtime enforcement layer's role (Section 15.5), and even there it is bounded, not closed (see that profile's security considerations). Closing within-scope data laundering needs a separate taint or information-flow layer this profile does not define.¶

15.5. Issuance Scope, Not Runtime Enforcement

This profile governs the issuance and derivation of authority: it bounds what authority a Mission yields, binds it to the Approver's consent, and gates derivation on Mission state. It does not evaluate individual runtime actions. In particular, it does not:¶

• evaluate a request's parameters against the Mission at the point of use;¶

• produce runtime enforcement evidence for each consequential action;¶

• bind tool or function identities to the Mission; or¶

• re-evaluate at execution time to close the approval-to-execution (time-of-check to time-of-use) gap.¶

Mission governance is necessary but not sufficient. An active Mission still bounds a set of authority an agent may exercise freely within a token's lifetime, so an active Mission can become ambient authority for individual consequential actions. Preventing that requires a runtime enforcement layer that evaluates each consequential action against the Mission and records evidence; such a layer composes with this profile and is out of scope here. Which party enforces each Mission-carried bound is summarized in the enforcement table (Section 4). Short token lifetimes and narrow authority bound, but do not eliminate, this exposure.¶

15.6. Token Theft

Derived tokens are sender-constrained (DPoP [RFC9449] or mTLS [RFC8705]) at the levels set in Section 8 and Section 11: SHOULD for the primary access token, MUST for delegated tokens; the companion sets the same MUST for its cross-domain credentials ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]). A stolen token is bounded by the Authority Set and the Mission lifetime regardless, but sender-constraint prevents replay by a different party.¶

15.7. Delegation and Chain Compromise

Delegation (Section 11) widens the set of parties holding Mission-derived authority. Because authority only narrows down the chain, a compromised actor can act only within the authority it was delegated, for the lifetime of the token it holds: the exposure of any actor is bounded by its narrowed authorization_details times its token lifetime. The per-entry delegation constraints (Section 11.3) bound this exposure at approval time: non-delegable entries never reach a delegate at all, max_depth caps how far an entry can propagate, and allowed_delegates restricts who may receive it. Note that max_depth bounds the length of a delegation chain, not its breadth: fan-out to many distinct depth-1 delegates is bounded only by allowed_delegates, so a deployment that needs to limit breadth MUST constrain allowed_delegates (and MAY use max_derivations to cap total derivations). Because each delegated token is bound to the delegate's own key (Section 11), a compromised delegate is confined to its own narrowed credential: it cannot replay as the agent or another actor, and its credential can be revoked by key without revoking the rest of the chain. Deployments SHOULD keep delegated token lifetimes short and SHOULD make only the entries that need delegation delegable.¶

15.8. Signing and Key Rotation

The mission claim and authorization_details are carried inside the [RFC9068] JWT and are covered by the AS's token signature; their integrity reduces to the AS's signing key. An AS MUST publish its verification keys (for example, via [RFC8414] jwks_uri) and SHOULD retain the verification key for each key identifier it has signed under long enough to verify tokens issued before a rotation.¶

15.9. Compromised or Over-Broad Derivation

The AS is trusted to derive authority no broader than the Mission Intent. Deployments SHOULD constrain derivation with explicit resource and action mappings rather than free-form inference, and SHOULD record policy_version so a derivation can be audited and reproduced. General OAuth security guidance [RFC9700] applies.¶

15.10. Authority Hash Is Not a Mission Identifier

authority_hash commits the approved Authority Set, not the Mission. Two distinct Missions that approve byte-identical authority carry the same authority_hash: a successor Mission that re-approves the same Authority Set, or an unrelated Mission with the same derived authority, differs in its intent_hash, approver, and id while sharing the authority_hash. It is therefore not globally unique to a Mission and MUST NOT be used as a Mission Identifier or as a replay or idempotency key for a Mission. The canonical Mission Identifier names the Mission; authority_hash names the authority the Mission approved. A consumer that needs to bind to or correlate a specific Mission uses the Mission Identifier, and intent_hash and approver distinguish Missions that share an Authority Set.¶

16.1. Mission Identifier Correlation

This document carries a single canonical Mission Identifier on every derived token; the companion's cross-domain projection carries it across trust domains unchanged ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]). Any party that observes credentials for the same Mission, whether a Resource Server, a Resource AS, or an auditor spanning audiences, can correlate that activity by the Mission Identifier, and mission.issuer further identifies the issuing AS. This is intentional: a stable, correlatable Mission anchor is what lets a Resource Server, a cross-domain Resource AS, and an auditor bind credentials and evidence to one approved Mission, which the governance and audit properties of this document and its companion profiles depend on. The cost is that this profile does not provide cross-audience unlinkability, and that is a deliberate non-goal for this version (Section 1.7), not an unfinished feature. Audience-pairwise (or request-pairwise) Mission references, in which the issuer projects a distinct opaque identifier per audience and resolves them server-side, are the fuller mechanism for unlinkability; because they work against the stable anchor, they are future work rather than a v1 property. A deployment that carries the canonical Mission Identifier on the wire SHOULD document this correlation property.¶

16.2. Token Payload Disclosure

The carried constraints and a multi-resource Authority Set disclose the shape of the task and its business bounds (for example, an amount ceiling) to every holder and every audience of a derived token. Per-RS single-audience tokens are the minimization measure: they carry only the entries the consuming Resource Server needs, and this document recommends them (Section 8). The privacy considerations of [RFC9396] apply to the carried authorization_details.¶

17.1. OAuth Parameters Registration

This document registers the following in the "OAuth Parameters" registry:¶

• Name: mission_intent¶

• Parameter Usage Location: authorization request¶

• Change Controller: IETF¶

• Specification Document(s): this document, Section 4¶

• Name: mission_id¶

• Parameter Usage Location: token response¶

• Change Controller: IETF¶

• Specification Document(s): this document, Section 6.1¶

PAR [RFC9126] carries authorization-request parameters without a distinct usage location, so the pushed submission of mission_intent needs no separate registration.¶

17.2. The Mission Resource Access Authorization Details Type

mission_resource_access is an authorization_details type per [RFC9396] Section 2, defined by this document in Section 5. RFC 9396 does not establish an IANA registry of authorization details types (type identifiers are interpreted by the Authorization Server), so this document creates no registry entry for it and requires no IANA action here. If a registry of authorization details types is established in the future, this type SHOULD be registered in it.¶

17.3. JSON Web Token Claims Registration

This document registers the following in the "JSON Web Token Claims" registry:¶

• Claim Name: mission¶

• Claim Description: Reference to the Mission a token was derived under, with the consent-commitment authority_hash. An open object; additional members may be present and are ignored if unknown.¶

• Change Controller: IETF¶

• Specification Document(s): this document, Section 8.1¶

17.4. OAuth Token Introspection Response Registration

This document registers the following in the "OAuth Token Introspection Response" registry ([RFC7662]):¶

• Name: mission¶

• Description: The Mission a token was derived under. Same object shape as the mission JWT claim (Section 8.1); a response from the Mission's issuer additionally carries a state member giving the current lifecycle state (Section 10).¶

• Change Controller: IETF¶

• Specification Document(s): this document, Section 10¶

17.5. OAuth Authorization Server Metadata Registration

This document registers the following in the "OAuth Authorization Server Metadata" registry ([RFC8414]):¶

• Metadata Name: mission_bound_authorization_supported¶

• Metadata Description: Boolean indicating that the Authorization Server supports the Mission Issuer core surfaces of this document.¶

• Change Controller: IETF¶

• Specification Document(s): this document, Section 13¶

17.6. OAuth Protected Resource Metadata Registration

This document registers the following in the "OAuth Protected Resource Metadata" registry ([RFC9728]):¶

• Metadata Name: mission_bound_authorization_required¶

• Metadata Description: Boolean indicating that the protected resource accepts only Mission-bound tokens.¶

• Change Controller: IETF¶

• Specification Document(s): this document, Section 14¶

17.7. Common Constraints

This document creates no Common Constraints registry. The Common Constraints it defines (max_amount, resource_issued_after, resource_issued_before, tenant, recipient_domain) are specified in Section 5.2, and a further Common Constraint is defined by specification: it fixes a name matching ^[A-Za-z0-9_.:-]+$, its JSON [RFC8259] value syntax, its subset rule, and its intersection rule, in value-space terms (Section 5.2). Names are kept collision-free by the same convention the rest of this document uses: a specification-defined name is coordinated within this document family, and any other name is collision-resistant or remains deployment-defined (Section 5.2).¶

Should the set of interoperable Common Constraints grow beyond what specification coordination bears, a future revision can create a "Mission Common Constraints" registry with a Specification Required [RFC8126] policy, seeded with the entries then defined; this document does not create it.¶

18.1. Normative References

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-actor-profile]

McGuinness, K., "OAuth Actor Profile for Delegation", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-mcguinness-oauth-actor-profile-00, 30 April 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mcguinness-oauth-actor-profile-00>.

[ISO4217]

International Organization for Standardization, "ISO 4217:2015, Codes for the representation of currencies and funds", ISO 4217:2015, August 2015.

[RFC2119]

Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

[RFC3339]

Klyne, G. and C. Newman, "Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps", RFC 3339, DOI 10.17487/RFC3339, July 2002, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339>.

[RFC3986]

Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986>.

[RFC6234]

Eastlake 3rd, D. and T. Hansen, "US Secure Hash Algorithms (SHA and SHA-based HMAC and HKDF)", RFC 6234, DOI 10.17487/RFC6234, May 2011, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6234>.

[RFC6749]

Hardt, D., Ed., "The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework", RFC 6749, DOI 10.17487/RFC6749, October 2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749>.

[RFC7519]

Jones, M., Bradley, J., and N. Sakimura, "JSON Web Token (JWT)", RFC 7519, DOI 10.17487/RFC7519, May 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7519>.

[RFC7636]

Sakimura, N., Ed., Bradley, J., and N. Agarwal, "Proof Key for Code Exchange by OAuth Public Clients", RFC 7636, DOI 10.17487/RFC7636, September 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7636>.

[RFC7662]

Richer, J., Ed., "OAuth 2.0 Token Introspection", RFC 7662, DOI 10.17487/RFC7662, October 2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7662>.

[RFC7800]

Jones, M., Bradley, J., and H. Tschofenig, "Proof-of-Possession Key Semantics for JSON Web Tokens (JWTs)", RFC 7800, DOI 10.17487/RFC7800, April 2016, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7800>.

[RFC8174]

Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

[RFC8259]

Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format", STD 90, RFC 8259, DOI 10.17487/RFC8259, December 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8259>.

[RFC8414]

Jones, M., Sakimura, N., and J. Bradley, "OAuth 2.0 Authorization Server Metadata", RFC 8414, DOI 10.17487/RFC8414, June 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8414>.

[RFC8693]

Jones, M., Nadalin, A., Campbell, B., Ed., Bradley, J., and C. Mortimore, "OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange", RFC 8693, DOI 10.17487/RFC8693, January 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8693>.

[RFC8705]

Campbell, B., Bradley, J., Sakimura, N., and T. Lodderstedt, "OAuth 2.0 Mutual-TLS Client Authentication and Certificate-Bound Access Tokens", RFC 8705, DOI 10.17487/RFC8705, February 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8705>.

[RFC8707]

Campbell, B., Bradley, J., and H. Tschofenig, "Resource Indicators for OAuth 2.0", RFC 8707, DOI 10.17487/RFC8707, February 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8707>.

[RFC8785]

Rundgren, A., Jordan, B., and S. Erdtman, "JSON Canonicalization Scheme (JCS)", RFC 8785, DOI 10.17487/RFC8785, June 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8785>.

[RFC9068]

Bertocci, V., "JSON Web Token (JWT) Profile for OAuth 2.0 Access Tokens", RFC 9068, DOI 10.17487/RFC9068, October 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9068>.

[RFC9126]

Lodderstedt, T., Campbell, B., Sakimura, N., Tonge, D., and F. Skokan, "OAuth 2.0 Pushed Authorization Requests", RFC 9126, DOI 10.17487/RFC9126, September 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9126>.

[RFC9396]

Lodderstedt, T., Richer, J., and B. Campbell, "OAuth 2.0 Rich Authorization Requests", RFC 9396, DOI 10.17487/RFC9396, May 2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9396>.

[RFC9449]

Fett, D., Campbell, B., Bradley, J., Lodderstedt, T., Jones, M., and D. Waite, "OAuth 2.0 Demonstrating Proof of Possession (DPoP)", RFC 9449, DOI 10.17487/RFC9449, September 2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9449>.

[RFC9728]

Jones, M.B., Hunt, P., and A. Parecki, "OAuth 2.0 Protected Resource Metadata", RFC 9728, DOI 10.17487/RFC9728, April 2025, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9728>.

18.2. Informative References

[AuthZEN.ARAP]

OpenID Foundation, "OpenID AuthZEN Access Request and Approval Profile 1.0", 2025, <https://openid.github.io/authzen/authzen-access-request-approval-profile-1_0.html>.

[FAPI.GrantManagement]

OpenID Foundation, "Grant Management for OAuth 2.0", 2022, <https://openid.net/specs/fapi-grant-management-01.html>.

[I-D.draft-cecchetti-oauth-rar-cedar]

Cecchetti, S., "Cedar Profile for OAuth 2.0 Rich Authorization Requests", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-cecchetti-oauth-rar-cedar-02, 21 February 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-cecchetti-oauth-rar-cedar-02>.

[I-D.draft-ietf-oauth-transaction-tokens]

Tulshibagwale, A., Fletcher, G., and P. Kasselman, "Transaction Tokens", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-oauth-transaction-tokens-09, 6 July 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-oauth-transaction-tokens-09>.

[I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth]

Kasselman, P., Lombardo, J., Rosomakho, Y., Campbell, B., Steele, N., and A. Parecki, "AI Agent Authentication and Authorization", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-02, 1 June 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-02>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-metering]

McGuinness, K., "Mission Consumption Metering", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-mission-metering.html>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]

McGuinness, K., "Mission-Bound Runtime Enforcement", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime.html>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-ai-agent-instance]

McGuinness, K., "OAuth 2.0 AI Agent Instance Profile", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-mcguinness-oauth-ai-agent-instance-00, 4 July 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mcguinness-oauth-ai-agent-instance-00>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-client-instance-assertion]

McGuinness, K., "OAuth 2.0 Client Instance Assertion", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-mcguinness-oauth-client-instance-assertion-01, 24 June 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mcguinness-oauth-client-instance-assertion-01>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-consent-evidence]

McGuinness, K., "Mission Consent Evidence for OAuth 2.0", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-consent-evidence.html>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]

McGuinness, K., "Mission Cross-Domain Projection for OAuth 2.0", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain.html>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-expansion]

McGuinness, K., "Mission Expansion for OAuth 2.0", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-expansion.html>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-signals]

McGuinness, K., "Mission Lifecycle Signals for OAuth 2.0", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-signals.html>.

[I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status]

McGuinness, K., "Mission Status and Lifecycle for OAuth 2.0", 2026, <https://mcguinness.github.io/mission-bound-authorization/draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-status.html>.

[I-D.draft-niyikiza-oauth-attenuating-agent-tokens]

Aimable, N., "Attenuating Authorization Tokens for Agentic Delegation Chains", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-niyikiza-oauth-attenuating-agent-tokens-01, 15 June 2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-niyikiza-oauth-attenuating-agent-tokens-01>.

[MCP]

Model Context Protocol Project, "Model Context Protocol: Authorization", 2025, <https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-06-18/basic/authorization>.

[RFC6750]

Jones, M. and D. Hardt, "The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework: Bearer Token Usage", RFC 6750, DOI 10.17487/RFC6750, October 2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6750>.

[RFC7009]

Lodderstedt, T., Ed., Dronia, S., and M. Scurtescu, "OAuth 2.0 Token Revocation", RFC 7009, DOI 10.17487/RFC7009, August 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7009>.

[RFC8126]

Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8126>.

[RFC8935]

Backman, A., Ed., Jones, M., Ed., Scurtescu, M., Ansari, M., and A. Nadalin, "Push-Based Security Event Token (SET) Delivery Using HTTP", RFC 8935, DOI 10.17487/RFC8935, November 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8935>.

[RFC9493]

Backman, A., Ed., Scurtescu, M., and P. Jain, "Subject Identifiers for Security Event Tokens", RFC 9493, DOI 10.17487/RFC9493, December 2023, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9493>.

[RFC9700]

Lodderstedt, T., Bradley, J., Labunets, A., and D. Fett, "Best Current Practice for OAuth 2.0 Security", BCP 240, RFC 9700, DOI 10.17487/RFC9700, January 2025, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9700>.

A.1. Stage 0: Agent Identity (by Reference)

The agent is an OAuth client with a workload identity (for example a WIMSE or SPIFFE identity), and alice has delegated to it through an ordinary authorization-code flow, per [I-D.draft-klrc-aiagent-auth]: client_id is the agent and the token sub is alice. This document adds the Mission layer on top of that identity; Stage 0 is otherwise unchanged from that specification.¶

A.2. Stage 1: Mission Creation

The agent submits this Mission Intent through PAR (Section 4):¶

{
  "goal": "Reconcile Q3 invoices and post adjustments under $500.",
  "resources": ["https://erp.example.com"],
  "constraints": [
    "Read only invoices issued in 2026-Q3.",
    "Post journal entries under $500."
  ],
  "success_criteria": [
    "All Q3 invoices reconciled.",
    "Each posted adjustment references a source invoice."
  ],
  "purpose": "urn:example:purpose:reconcile",
  "expires_at": "2026-12-31T23:59:59Z",
  "controls": {
    "acr": "urn:example:acr:mfa",
    "max_derivations": 200
  }
}

The AS (as.example.com) validates it, derives this Authority Set, and renders it for alice's consent:¶

[
  { "type": "mission_resource_access",
    "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
    "actions": ["invoices.read"],
    "constraints": {
      "resource_issued_after": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
      "resource_issued_before": "2026-09-30T23:59:59Z"
    },
    "delegation": {
      "max_depth": 2,
      "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
    } },
  { "type": "mission_resource_access",
    "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
    "actions": ["journal-entries.write"],
    "constraints": {
      "max_amount": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" }
    } }
]

After approval, the AS records Mission msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9- in the active state with authority_hash sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ and intent_hash sha-256:wQ7p4LHnX9Md0LqJ6sZJ8b8mZ3rN2xT5pV4lE6sQqYY.¶

A.3. Stage 2: Mission-Bound Token Issuance

The agent redeems the authorization code at the token endpoint. The AS resolves the Mission from the grant (Section 6.1), gates on it being active (Section 9), and issues a Mission-bound access token for the ERP, echoing the granted authorization_details in the token response (Section 8). The decoded token:¶

{
  "iss": "https://as.example.com",
  "sub": "user_3p2q8mN1a0kV7tR",
  "aud": "https://erp.example.com",
  "client_id": "s6BhdRkqt3",
  "iat": 1797840000,
  "exp": 1797840300,
  "jti": "at_9Kp2vN7sR1tY8mZ3qX5b",
  "authorization_details": [
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["invoices.read"],
      "constraints": {
        "resource_issued_after": "2026-07-01T00:00:00Z",
        "resource_issued_before": "2026-09-30T23:59:59Z"
      },
      "delegation": {
        "max_depth": 2,
        "allowed_delegates": [{ "sub_profile": "ai_agent" }]
      } },
    { "type": "mission_resource_access",
      "resource": "https://erp.example.com",
      "actions": ["journal-entries.write"],
      "constraints": {
        "max_amount": { "amount": "500.00", "currency": "USD" }
      } }
  ],
  "cnf": { "jkt": "0ZcOCORZNYy-DWpqq30jZyJGHTN0d2HglBV3uiguA4I" },
  "mission": {
    "id": "msn_8RfX2Lqv9TqMv4z7sA2bN1k0YpEdHc9-",
    "issuer": "https://as.example.com",
    "authority_hash":
      "sha-256:l3KvZ4mP5x0wQrR6tY2nD9bM7sX1cF8gH2vJ4kE5pNQ"
  }
}

Everything enforcement needs is in the token: the audience, the sender-constraint (cnf), the authority with its constraints, and the mission claim carrying the authority_hash consent anchor. The token is short-lived (300 s) and its exp is far below expires_at; revoking the Mission stops further derivation, and this token dies at its own expiry (Section 9.2).¶

A.4. Stage 3: The Resource Server Enforces

The agent calls the ERP Resource Server (erp.example.com) with that token. The Resource Server validates the JWT and the cnf binding and enforces the authorization_details whose resource it serves, permitting invoices.read within the Q3 issuance window and journal-entries.write up to the max_amount ceiling of 500.00 USD (Section 8.2). It treats the mission claim as audit and correlation context and makes no call to the AS.¶

This is stateless enforcement from the token alone. journal-entries.write is a consequential write, so where the deployment runs the runtime profile ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-mission-runtime]) it also obtains a point-of-use PDP permit against current Mission state before executing. The baseline bounds the write only by token lifetime and the carried constraints.¶

The cross-domain continuation of this same Mission, projected to a partner ERP in another trust domain and enforced there, is walked through in the companion's end-to-end example ([I-D.draft-mcguinness-oauth-mission-cross-domain]).¶