Agent Identity, Trust and Lifecycle Protocol (AITLP)

This document defines the Agent Identity, Trust and Lifecycle Protocol (AITLP), a protocol for autonomous software agents operating within organizational boundaries. AITLP specifies agent identity and naming conventions, hierarchical mandate enforcement, lifecycle state management, inter-agent trust verification, ontological scope constraints, certificate-based authentication, and generational knowledge transfer via Agent Legacy Mode (ALM). The protocol enables agents to operate autonomously while remaining auditable, revocable, and organizationally bounded. AITLP focuses on boundaries -- what an agent is not permitted to do and how that is enforced -- complementing capability-focused specifications such as MCP, A2A, and ANS. Unlike those specifications, AITLP defines not a tool or a communication channel, but an organizational actor: an agent with a declared identity, a bounded mandate, a managed lifecycle, and a cryptographically enforced scope of authority.