Comment by niyikiza

Yep ... that's exactly the direction. Think "default deny + step-up," not "grant everything up front."

You keep a coarse cap (e.g. email read/write, invoice pay) but each task runs under a narrower, time-boxed warrant derived from that cap. Narrowing happens at the policy/UX layer (human or deterministic rules), not by the LLM. The LLM can request escalation ("need send"), but it only gets it via an explicit approval / rule.

Crypto isn't deciding scope. It's enforcing monotonic attenuation, binding the grant to an agent key, and producing a receipt that the scope was explicitly approved.

For a single-process agent this might be overkill. It matters more when warrants cross trust boundaries: third-party tools, sub-agents in different runtimes, external services. Offline verification means each hop can validate without calling home