How does ID MANDAT: A Machine-Readable Credential for the Agents of a Company compare to other identify protocols?

ID MANDAT: A Machine-Readable Credential for the Agents of a Company is one of 23 standards at step 2, Identify (Who is this agent? Who is this site?). It pairs with Web Bot Auth HTTP Message Signatures, HTTP Message Signatures, Agent2Agent Protocol, Model Context Protocol. It builds on Web Bot Auth HTTP Message Signatures. Every standard at this step is listed at https://agenticweb.wiki/category/identify/.

ID MANDAT: A Machine-Readable Credential for the Agents of a Company ID MANDAT

2 · Identify

Candidate · auto-drafted, unreviewed · confidence 60%

ID MANDAT: A Machine-Readable Credential for the Agents of a Company
Category	Identify
Governed by	Individual Internet-Draft, not an IETF working group product; the reference registry is operated at idmandat.com
Status	Internet-Draft, Intended Status: Informational; individual submission describing a deployed beta (version 0.3), not the product of an IETF working group
Phase	draft
Implementation	prototype
Adoption	unmeasured
Version	draft-koenig-idmandat-credential-00 (2026-10-16)
Specification	https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-koenig-idmandat-credential-00
Found at	/.well-known/idmandat.json
Last checked	2026-10-19
Freshness	current · checked 2026-10-19
Solves	Prove an agent's identity, Describe an agent's capabilities, Delegate a user's authority to an agent, Attribute and measure agent traffic

ID MANDAT: A Machine-Readable Credential for the Agents of a Company is an agentic-web standard (well-known file) at step 2, Identify, governed by Individual Internet-Draft, not an IETF working group product; its own status is "Internet-Draft, Intended Status: Informational; individual submission describing a deployed beta (version 0.3), not the product of an IETF working group" (draft). It answers: How can a recipient find out which company stands behind an agent and what that agent is declared to be allowed and not allowed to do on the company's behalf? Adoption is unmeasured, last verified 2026-10-19.

Identify Describes a JSON credential file a company publishes at /.well-known/idmandat.json, naming the company and its agents with per-agent 'may' and 'mayNot' mandates. A DNS TXT record at _idmandat.<domain> ties the file to the domain. A public registry checks both and returns Ed25519-signed answers with check levels and revocation states. The agent details are operator declarations and not verified by the registry. It complements Web Bot Auth, which proves key possession but not who operates the agent.

Discovery and probe

well-known file at /.well-known/idmandat.json, linked to the domain by a DNS TXT record at _idmandat.<domain> · /.well-known/idmandat.json

GET /.well-known/idmandat.json
parse:     Parse JSON; check that 'domain' equals the fetched host and that 'agents' is present; optionally resolve the TXT record _idmandat.<domain> for 'v=idmandat1'
on absent: Treat as no declaration; absence is not evidence against the agent

Not probed live: no-fixed-path. candidate record; probe rule pending

History

2026-10-19 — auto-drafted candidate from exa (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-koenig-idmandat-credential-00)

Instances

No instances recorded yet.

References

Internet-Draft defining a credential file at /.well-known/idmandat.json, a DNS TXT proof record at _idmandat, and a signed Ed25519 registry lookup answer format; described as a deployed beta (version 0.3). — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-koenig-idmandat-credential-00 (2026-10-16) REPORTED

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