# Right to History: A Sovereignty Kernel for Verifiable AI Agent Execution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20214 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20214/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [The Off-Switch Game](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08219/) (2016)
- [AIOS: LLM Agent Operating System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16971/) (2024)
- [Hyperledger Fabric: A Distributed Operating System for Permissioned Blockchains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10228/) (2018)
- [Infrastructure for AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10114/) (2025)
- [LLM as OS, Agents as Apps: Envisioning AIOS, Agents and the AIOS-Agent Ecosystem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03815/) (2023)
- [AgentBound: Securing Execution Boundaries of AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21236/) (2025)
- [Governance-as-a-Service: A Multi-Agent Framework for AI System Compliance and Policy Enforcement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18765/) (2025)
- [Agent Contracts: A Formal Framework for Resource-Bounded Autonomous AI Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08815/) (2026)
- [AgentCgroup: Understanding and Controlling OS Resources of AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09345/) (2026)
- [Sovereign Agents: Towards Infrastructural Sovereignty and Diffused Accountability in Decentralized AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14951/) (2026)
- [The Oversight Game: Learning to Cooperatively Balance an AI Agent's Safety and Autonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26752/) (2025)
- [Who Grants the Agent Power? Defending Against Instruction Injection via Task-Centric Access Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26212/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [ProbeLogits: Kernel-Level LLM Inference Primitives for AI-Native Operating Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11943/) (2026)
- [CapSeal: Capability-Sealed Secret Mediation for Secure Agent Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16762/) (2026)
- [Notarized Agents: Receiver-Attested Confidential Receipts for AI Agent Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04193/) (2026)
- [Behavioral Governance for Autonomous AI Agents: The AgentBound Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30970/) (2026)
- [Agent Economics: An Entropy-Controlled Pluralistic Alignment Framework for Preventing Artificial Hivemind in Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09039/) (2026)
- [The Civilization Framework: Sovereign-Anchored Communication Between Personal Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03425/) (2026)
- [Janus: Evidence-Before-Effect Sagas and Offline-Verifiable Provenance for Agentic LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38266/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

AI agents increasingly act on behalf of humans, yet no existing system provides a tamper-evident, independently verifiable record of what they did. As regulations such as the EU AI Act begin mandating automatic logging for high-risk AI systems, this gap carries concrete consequences -- especially for agents running on personal hardware, where no centralized provider controls the log. Extending Floridi's informational rights framework from data about individuals to actions performed on their behalf, this paper proposes the Right to History: the principle that individuals are entitled to a complete, verifiable record of every AI agent action on their own hardware. The paper formalizes this principle through five system invariants with structured proof sketches, and implements it in PunkGo, a Rust sovereignty kernel that unifies RFC 6962 Merkle tree audit logs, capability-based isolation, energy-budget governance, and a human-approval mechanism. Adversarial testing confirms all five invariants hold. Performance evaluation shows sub-1.3 ms median action latency, ~400 actions/sec throughput, and 448-byte Merkle inclusion proofs at 10,000 log entries.