{
 "acronym": "SPIFFE",
 "adoption": {
  "by": "SPIFFE's own ecosystem page lists SPIRE, cert-manager, Consul, Dapr, Istio as open-source implementers and GCP, Teleport, Palo Alto Networks/Idira, Red Hat, Defakto, Cofide and Greymatter.io as commercial implementers — none of this is agent-specific adoption",
  "level": "observed",
  "probe_run": null
 },
 "aliases": [
  "Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone"
 ],
 "analog": "Workload-scoped X.509/mTLS or JWT identity, analogous to per-service TLS certs",
 "collisions": [],
 "discovery": {
  "mechanism": "Local Workload API (a Unix domain socket, not a network-reachable endpoint) issues short-lived X.509-SVID or JWT-SVID identity documents to an attested workload",
  "path": "none"
 },
 "dispute": {
  "claims": [
   "It is not yet established whether the SPIFFE project itself will adopt an agent-specific profile, or whether this remains solely the proposal of the outside aiagent-auth draft."
  ],
  "summary": "SPIFFE itself is not an agent-specific standard — it is a general workload-identity framework. Its relevance to this map comes entirely from a separate, non-SPIFFE-governed IETF individual draft that proposes profiling SPIFFE (and WIMSE) for AI agents."
 },
 "evidence": [
  {
   "claim": "SPIFFE is a CNCF set of open-source specifications for issuing short-lived cryptographic workload identities (SVIDs) via a local Workload API; its own overview and ecosystem pages describe general workload identity for services, not AI agents specifically",
   "date": null,
   "label": "VERIFIED",
   "url": "https://spiffe.io/docs/latest/spiffe-about/overview/"
  },
  {
   "claim": "The IETF individual draft \"AI Agent Authentication and Authorization\" (draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-03, authored by engineers from Defakto, AWS, Zscaler, Ping Identity, OpenAI and Okta) proposes applying SPIFFE/WIMSE and OAuth 2.0 to AI-agent authentication, rather than defining new protocols",
   "date": "2026-07-06",
   "label": "VERIFIED",
   "url": "https://www.ietf.org/ietf-ftp/internet-drafts/draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-03.html"
  }
 ],
 "form": "endpoint",
 "governance": "CNCF (SPIFFE is a graduated CNCF project); the AI-agent profile is governed separately as an IETF individual draft, not by the SPIFFE project itself",
 "group": null,
 "history": [
  {
   "date": "2026-09-05",
   "note": "seeded from Exa Agent research run"
  },
  {
   "date": "2026-09-06",
   "note": "verified against spiffe.io's own overview/ecosystem page and draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-03; corrected framing to make clear SPIFFE itself is agent-agnostic and the agent application is an outside proposal"
  }
 ],
 "id": "spiffe",
 "implementation": "multi-implementation",
 "last_verified": "2026-09-06",
 "name": "SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone)",
 "native_status": "Active, stable open-source specification set (SPIFFE/SPIRE); SPIFFE itself makes no agent-specific claims",
 "origin": {
  "date": null,
  "org": "SPIFFE project (CNCF-graduated); AI-agent application profiled separately by IETF individual draft authors"
 },
 "part_of": null,
 "parties": [
  "agent-site"
 ],
 "phase": "stable",
 "probe": {
  "method": "n/a (local IPC, not remotely probable)",
  "on_absent": "No SPIFFE identity is available to the workload; it cannot present an SVID for mTLS or JWT-based authentication",
  "parse": "Workload API FetchX509SVID/FetchJWTSVID response contains a SPIFFE ID (spiffe://trust-domain/path) and a short-lived SVID",
  "path": "unix:///run/spire/sockets/agent.sock (SPIRE's default; not part of the SPIFFE spec itself)"
 },
 "question": "Which workload instance — potentially including an AI agent process — is making this request, verifiable independent of network location?",
 "scope": "general",
 "spec_url": "https://spiffe.io/docs/latest/spiffe-about/overview/",
 "step": "identify",
 "summary_md": "SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone) is a CNCF-graduated set of open-source specifications for issuing short-lived, cryptographic identity documents (SVIDs — SPIFFE Verifiable Identity Documents, either X.509 or JWT) to software workloads via a local Workload API, so that services can mutually authenticate across dynamic, heterogeneous infrastructure without relying on network location [1]. It is included in this map's Identify layer because an active IETF individual draft proposes applying it — alongside WIMSE and OAuth 2.0 — to AI-agent authentication specifically [2].\n\nIt solves workload-to-workload mutual authentication at scale: instead of IP-based network policies, each workload instance attests to a SPIRE server (or another SPIFFE-compliant issuer) and receives a short-lived, automatically rotated identity bound to a `spiffe://trust-domain/path` name [1]. What it does not do is anything agent-specific by itself: the SPIFFE specification and its own documentation make no claims about AI agents, delegation from a human principal, or any of the semantics an autonomous-agent identity system would need beyond \"this is workload X.\" That gap is what the separate draft-klrc-aiagent-auth draft (co-authored by engineers from Defakto, AWS, Zscaler, Ping Identity, OpenAI and Okta) attempts to address by describing how SPIFFE and WIMSE identities, combined with OAuth 2.0 token exchange, could carry an agent's identity and a delegation chain from its human or organizational principal — without SPIFFE itself defining any new protocol for this [2].\n\nCurrent state: SPIFFE's core specifications (SPIFFE ID, X509-SVID, JWT-SVID, Workload API, Federation) are stable and have been for years; SPIFFE and its reference implementation SPIRE are both CNCF-graduated projects. The AI-agent application is at draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-03 (July 2026), an Informational individual draft under the IETF Network Working Group umbrella, not a SPIFFE-project deliverable [2].\n\nWho implements it: SPIFFE's own ecosystem page lists SPIRE, cert-manager, Consul, Dapr and Istio as open-source implementers, and GCP, Teleport, Palo Alto Networks (Idira), Red Hat, Defakto, Cofide and Greymatter.io as commercial implementers of the general workload-identity spec [1] — none of this reflects AI-agent-specific deployment.\n\nDisputed or unknown: whether SPIFFE will formally adopt an agent identity profile, versus this remaining an outside proposal layered on top of it, is unresolved. No production system was found in this pass actually issuing SPIFFE SVIDs to AI agents specifically (as opposed to conventional microservice workloads).",
 "track": "linux-foundation",
 "version": {
  "date": null,
  "label": "SPIFFE core specs (SPIFFE ID, X509-SVID, JWT-SVID, Workload API) are stable and versioned independently; the AI-agent profile is draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-03, published 2026-07-06"
 },
 "url": "https://agenticweb.wiki/protocols/spiffe/",
 "category": "identify",
 "type": "protocol"
}