draft-morrison-identity-pronouns

Identity Pronouns: A Reference-Axis Extension to ~handle Identity Systems

groupnone stateactive pages12 rev01 expires2026-11-18 canonicalhttps://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-morrison-identity-pronouns/
This document defines an identity pronoun grammar as a reference axis orthogonal to the ~handle identity tier taxonomy defined in [MCPDNS] and [IDCOMMITS]. A pronoun is a session-scoped reference that resolves client-side to a concrete handle using local session state before any cryptographic, DNS, or federation operation. The entity- class taxonomy (Sovereign, Bot, Instrument) is unchanged; this specification introduces Absolute vs Pronoun as an orthogonal axis. A pronoun MUST NOT appear in a capability token, in a DNS record, in an Accord signature, or in any inter-organisational protocol payload. The reference implementation defines a single Wave-1 pronoun, ~org, that resolves to the concrete handle of the organisation bound to the caller's current session. An appendix defines a relative-path pronoun grammar (e.g. ~./architect, ~../weaver) as a non-normative design surface for future work. The mechanism is provider-neutral, introduces no new cryptographic primitive, and imposes zero new load on DNS, capability-token issuers, or federated resolvers.