How an agent acts under a permit
Four steps, from an agent’s request to a record anyone can check.
The agent describes the action it wants to take, over MCP or HTTP.
What the register says
An AI agent can reach Village Gateway through an MCP adapter with three tools: ask for a decision, read a decision, and take a permit for an allowed decision.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-02.
Village Gateway checks it against the policy: allow, hold for a person, or deny.
What the register says
Policies are organised by category: the server resolves a category from the action, a policy profile folds deny over gate over allow, versions are immutable and activated atomically, and a decision is re-checked at approval and at permit if the profile changed. Four seed categories ship as templates.
Village Gateway is built and deployed on both production hosts as an access and approval layer: an agent or person's request to act is checked against the Village™'s policy, a decision is recorded with a signed receipt, an approval-gated request waits for a different approver, and an allowed request gets a one-use permit that a resource redeems exactly once.
An allowed or approved action gets a permit for exactly that action, usable once.
What the register says
A reference resource shows how a protected system redeems a Gateway permit over HTTP: an allowed request executes exactly once, an approval-gated request waits and executes once after approval, and the resource reports the outcome back to the record.
A Village Gateway permit lasts at most five minutes and never outlasts the decision that allowed it.
The outcome joins the record; the decision exports with its approvals and receipt.
What the register says
A decision record can be exported with its approvals, receipt and events, and an offline checker (Node 20, no network, no product installed) verifies the export against a bundle of public keys.
Village Gateway sends every receipt it signs to an outside time-stamping authority (Certum), and the checking program verifies the RFC 3161 stamp offline when an export carries one; on 4 Nov 2026 a decision was held, approved with a step-up sign-in, given a one-use permit and exported, and the checking program returned verified, including the Certum stamp.
What an agent can do
Ask for a decision, read it, and take a permit for an allowed one.
What the register says
An AI agent can reach Village Gateway through an MCP adapter with three tools: ask for a decision, read a decision, and take a permit for an allowed decision.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-02.
Act once on that action, within the permit’s time, five minutes at most.
What the register says
A Village Gateway permit lasts at most five minutes and never outlasts the decision that allowed it.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-09.
What it cannot do
Approve anything, its own request included.
What the register says
An agent cannot approve a request, its own or any other: the MCP adapter and the machine API have no approve action, and approval needs a signed-in owner, admin or moderator who is not the person behind the requesting key.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-13.
Use a permit twice.
What the register says
Village Gateway is built and deployed on both production hosts as an access and approval layer: an agent or person's request to act is checked against the Village's policy, a decision is recorded with a signed receipt, an approval-gated request waits for a different approver, and an allowed request gets a one-use permit that a resource redeems exactly once.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-01.
Spend past the limit set on its key.
What the register says
The Village owner can set a spending limit on each agent key, per currency, per day, week or month; a request over the limit is refused, not held.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-12.
Act once the Village owner has stopped Village Gateway.
What the register says
The Village owner can stop Village Gateway in one step: outstanding permits are withdrawn, and nothing is decided, approved or redeemed until the owner lifts the stop.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-11.
Keep a request waiting past 24 hours.
What the register says
A request held for approval lapses after 24 hours, and the lapse is written to the decision's record.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-10.
Act in a category whose policy says deny.
What the register says
Policies are organised by category: the server resolves a category from the action, a policy profile folds deny over gate over allow, versions are immutable and activated atomically, and a decision is re-checked at approval and at permit if the profile changed. Four seed categories ship as templates.
Limits and dates for each: GTW-05.
A permit governs the systems that ask for one. Village Gateway does not reach into systems that do not ask.