Proof-of-Behavior Protocol for Autonomous AI Agents

Autonomous AI agents execute actions — file writes, API calls, shell commands — on behalf of human principals. No standard mechanism exists for a third party to verify that an agent acted within its declared behavioral rules, that policy enforcement occurred before execution (not after), or that the action log has not been tampered with after the fact. This document defines the Proof-of-Behavior (PoB) protocol: a minimal, language-agnostic standard for tamper-evident audit trails and pre-execution policy enforcement in AI agent systems. The protocol specifies a signed receipt format, a hash-chain linking scheme, a policy gate contract, and a cross-agent reference mechanism.