LittleYeti-Dev/yks-pubs: Intent Integrity: CIA and Non-Repudiation as Properties of Intent, Not Data (v0-1-seed)

Intent Integrity: CIA and Non-Repudiation as Properties of Intent, Not Data

Version: 0-1-seed Slug: intent-integrity Live page: https://nonsequitur.tech/pubs/white-papers/intent-integrity/ PDF: intent-integrity-v0-1-seed.pdf

Abstract

The information-security canon names confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA), plus non-repudiation, as the load-bearing properties of data. Decades of operational practice — at the protocol level, at the storage level, at the wire level — operate against this property set. Governed agentic systems require an analogous property set applied to a different artifact: intent, the operator-pinned envelope that the system is supposed to remain aligned with across its operating horizon. Intent-CIA-NR is not derivable from data-CIA-NR; the two property sets operate on different artifacts with different threat models, different verification primitives, and different operational disciplines. This paper specifies intent-CIA-NR as the security model that the intent horizon — named in Paper One of this series — operationally requires. Confidentiality of intent is the property that only the operator's authorized governance ceremony can read or modify the pinned horizon. Integrity of intent is the property that the system's reasoning chain preserves the operator-pinned commitments end-to-end through every micro-decision the agentic execution layer makes. Availability of intent is the property that the operator can recover, in real time, the system's current intent — not its current output, not its current state, but the envelope the system is currently treating as authoritative. Non-repudiation of intent is the property that every horizon-event (pin, drift, storm, recalibration) is signed, logged, and cryptographically attributable to the governance authority that issued it. The argument proceeds in five movements. Section 2 documents the failures of treating intent-security as data-security with intent-shaped variable names — five operational patterns in which data-level CIA is satisfied while intent-level CIA is violated invisibly. Section 3 specifies intent-confidentiality and intent-integrity, with the threat models and verification primitives each requires. Section 4 specifies intent-availability and intent-non-repudiation, with operational examples drawn from the heterogeneous federation documented in MR-P9. Section 5 places intent-CIA-NR within the HGC³AE² role ordering and shows how the prior architecture's runtime mechanisms acquire enforcement specificity once intent is the artifact under security. Section 6 hands off to IH-3 (Confident Misalignment as Horizon Failure), where the diagnostic consequences of intent-integrity loss are developed.

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