Trust Boundary
The line across which assumptions about trustworthiness change, and at which input must therefore be validated and authority re-established.
Why it matters
Multi-agent systems multiply boundaries faster than most architectures document them. Every delegation from one agent to another crosses one, and the practical question is whether authority is re-checked at the crossing or silently inherited.
What it is not
These are routinely confused with Trust Boundary. The distinctions are not pedantic — each one has consequences for how a system is governed.
A perimeter is topological. A trust boundary is semantic and frequently sits inside a single process.
Relationships
Typed edges into the rest of the ontology. These are what make the canon traversable rather than merely readable.
| Verb | Target | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
constrains | Task Delegation | The subject bounds what the object may do. |
addresses | Authority | The subject speaks to the object as a question or concern. |
Record
| Canonical identifier | QIS-TERM-00004 |
| Status | Canonical industry term |
| Adoption | Widely used |
| Domain · Layer | Identity & discovery · Governance |
| Origin | Long-standing in security engineering; applied to agents from 2025 onward. |
| Semantic aliases | None recorded. |
| First published | 2026-08-02 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-08-02 · 180-day cycle |
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