vaid-mint 0.1.1

The open, self-hostable reference mint (Python) for the VAID standard: mint a root VAID and mint attenuated child VAIDs (scope/capability-contained delegation).

vaid-mint (Python)

The Python mirror of the Rust vaid-mint crate: the open, self-hostable reference mint for the VAID (Verifiable Agent Identity) standard.

• mint_root — mint a root/operator VAID (BYO-key with proof-of-possession, or generate-and-discard), gated by an explicit AuthorizationGate.
• mint_child — attenuated delegation: an authenticated parent mints a child whose authority is always a subset of its own (child ⊆ parent).

Trust model — read this before using the mint

This is a reference implementation with two deliberate, unguarded defaults:

1. mint_root has no authorization gate by default (PermitAll). Anyone who can call this code can mint a root VAID. Supply a real AuthorizationGate for anything beyond local experimentation.
2. mint_child is intentionally ungated — attenuation is the authorization. Any holder of a valid parent VAID can mint children from it; a child can only narrow scope/capabilities relative to its parent, never widen (child ⊆ parent). Possession of a parent VAID is itself the authorization boundary for delegation here. Treat parent-VAID custody with the same care as a credential.

Neither of these is a security recommendation for production use — they are the honest defaults of a self-hostable reference mint. See the sections below for where each is enforced in code.

from vaid_mint import ReferenceIssuer, InMemoryAudit, MintService, VaidSeed

issuer = ReferenceIssuer.ephemeral(24)
mint = MintService(issuer, InMemoryAudit())
root = mint.mint_root(VaidSeed(
    agent_class="orchestrator", version="1.0.0", tenant_id="acme",
    scope_boundary=["data.acme"], capability_set=["read", "write"],
))
assert issuer.verify_vaid(root)

The split

This is the open engine of a HashiCorp-Vault-style split. Durable revocation, KMS-backed kernel keys, and the audit-of-record are the closed managed authority and are not here. mint_root is gated by an AuthorizationGate that defaults to PermitAll — a reference-implementation choice, not a security recommendation; production deployments should pass a real gate to MintService.

mint_child is intentionally ungated because attenuation is the authorization: any holder of a valid parent VAID can mint children from it, and a child can only narrow scope/capabilities relative to that parent, never widen (child ⊆ parent). So possession of a parent VAID is itself the authorization boundary for delegation — treat parent-VAID custody with the same care as a credential.

Cross-language byte-identity

Proof-of-possession reuses the vaid-pop primitive verbatim. The signed VAID document is proven byte-identical to the Rust mint by the vendored frozen vector vaid_mint/vectors/mint_v1.json (the same mint_v1.json the Rust mint_conformance test asserts). Run the packaged firewall:

vaid-mint-conformance          # exit 0 = PASS (installed mint == frozen vector)

Per Decision B this is self-consistent within this repo (Rust == Python); it is not byte-conformant against the managed authority's (still-moving) VAID format.

Install (local dev)

vaid-mint depends on vaid-pop. For a local checkout, install both editable:

pip install -e python/vaid-pop
pip install -e python/vaid-mint --no-deps