Glossary

Where a term comes from a specification, the specification is named. Where this profile narrows a meaning, the entry says so.

Agent token — a credential asserting an agent's identity, issued by an agent identity provider and bound to a session key. Optional: a pseudonymous agent has none.

Authorization server (AS) — the party that holds the owner's policy and answers on her behalf. UMA 2.0 term. In this profile it also dictates terms and keeps the ledger.

Beat — one of the four exchanges in a negotiation: challenge, attempt, commit, grant. Not a UMA term; used here because the sequence is easier to hold than the endpoint names.

Claim token — what the agent presents to satisfy the authorization server's demand for information. Here it carries the signed agreement.

Connection — a standing relationship between one agent and one owner, created when she first approves it. Keyed by the agent's identity, so revoking one touches no other.

Family — the identifier that ties every message in one negotiation together, assigned when the permission ticket is created and stable across rotations. The correlation id in every event.

Identified agent — an agent whose identity is asserted by an issuer rather than by its key alone. Its continuity survives key rotation, because the connection is keyed by issuer and subject.

JWK / JWK thumbprint (jkt) — a key in JSON form, and the RFC 7638 hash that names it compactly. A pseudonymous agent's connection handle is its jkt.

Ledger — the append-only record of what was promised, approved, denied, touched and revoked. A projection over the event stream, not a separate store.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) — the protocol the lab uses to expose the resource as tools an agent can call. One binding of the grant, not a requirement of it; the four beats are binding-independent.

need_info — the authorization server's answer when it wants something before it will decide. Carries the terms it requires. UMA 2.0 term.

Operation binding — a grant tied to one operation and one set of parameters, so approving a specific trade does not authorise trading.

Owner / resource owner (RO) — the party whose resource is being reached, and the only party whose permission the profile treats as decisive. resource owner in UMA 2.0 and OAuth 2.0; these docs say owner in prose and RO where the abbreviation is doing work, as in RO ≠ RqP.

PAT (protection API token) — the token a resource server holds to call the authorization server's protection API. Issued in the owner's name, and revocable by her.

Permission ticket — the opaque handle the enforcement point hands back when it refuses. Single-use; presenting it starts the negotiation. UMA 2.0 term.

Proof-of-possession (PoP) — a token that names a key, where every request must be signed with that key. The alternative to a bearer token, which anyone holding it can spend.

Pseudonymous agent — an agent with no issued identity, which is its key. The connection handle is the key's RFC 7638 thumbprint.

Requesting agent — the software making the request. Distinct from the requesting party. A 2010-era UMA term, revived here because the distinction has started to matter again.

Requesting party (RqP) — the human or organisation on whose behalf the agent asks. Accountable; not present at the keyboard. RO ≠ RqP is the shorthand for the case this profile exists for: the party asking is not the party who owns the thing.

Resource server (RS) — the party holding the resource and performing the enforcement obligations. Does not hold the owner's policy and cannot read it.

PEP (policy enforcement point) — the component that actually refuses: it challenges, verifies proof-of-possession, checks scope and operation binding, and spends single-use grants. Sits on the resource server's side and holds none of the owner's policy. Term borrowed from XACML, and in wide use since.

PDP (policy decision point) — the component that decides. In this profile the owner's authorization server is the PDP for her resources, which is the whole argument: the decision belongs to her side, not to the RS.

RPT (requesting party token) — the grant issued at the end of a successful negotiation. Here it is proof-of-possession rather than bearer, and for sensitive operations it is also single-use and operation-bound.

Terms — the machine-readable statement the authorization server dictates and the agent signs: purpose, scope, expiry, prohibitions. Follows the IEEE 7012 pattern.

Tier — a policy grouping written against resources: which tools it covers, what terms it dictates, and whether the owner must be asked. Names no agent.

Waypoint — a service-mesh proxy that evaluates policy at layer 7. Mesh terminology rather than UMA; it appears in the deployment pages because a path-scoped rule is meaningless without one.