# Anumati: Proof of Adherence as a Formal Consent Model for Autonomous Agent Protocols

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16524 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16524/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 16 Apr 2026.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Will the Agent Recuse, and Will It Stop? Measuring LLM-Agent Compliance with In-Band Governance Signals at the Access Door and Mid-Flight](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06460/) (2026)
- [Pramana: A Protocol-Layer Treatment of Claim Verification in Autonomous Agent Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20312/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As autonomous AI agents increasingly call other agents to complete tasks on behalf of a human principal, a structural accountability gap has emerged: the calling agent accepts the terms of service of the callee without any protocol-level mechanism to prove that it understood those terms or that it subsequently honoured them. Authentication protocols such as OAuth and mutual TLS establish who may call which capability. They do not address under what conditions a permitted call may be made, and those conditions change as the callee's policies evolve. In this paper we formalise the distinction between proof of acceptance (a timestamped acknowledgement) and proof of adherence (a per-action reasoning record citing the specific clause evaluated). We propose three primitives (PolicyDocument, ConsentRecord, and AdherenceEvent) that together constitute a versioned, append-only consent model for agent-to-agent communication. The model is instantiated as a non-breaking extension to two widely used agent protocols: the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and the Model Context Protocol (MCP). A TLA+ specification of the consent lifecycle, together with a reference Python implementation of the chain integrity and adherence trail validators, is available in the accompanying repository.