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How ATF Works

A step-by-step breakdown of the execution lifecycle, policy engine internals, enforcement model, and threat mitigations that make ATF a deterministic trust boundary for autonomous agents.

Execution Lifecycle

Every agent transaction follows six deterministic steps from intent to verifiable receipt. No step can be skipped or reordered.

1IntentCreation2PolicyEvaluation3PermitIssuance4TransactionConstruction5ExecutionValidation6ReceiptAnchoring
  1. 1

    Intent Creation

    The agent declares what it wants to do (swap, lend, withdraw). This is a structured intent object, not a raw transaction.

  2. 2

    Policy Evaluation

    The Policy Engine evaluates the intent against all active rules: allowlists, rate limits, spend caps, and time-of-day constraints.

  3. 3

    Permit Issuance

    If the policy evaluation passes, a scoped, TTL-bound permit is issued with a single-use nonce and minimum required capabilities.

  4. 4

    Transaction Construction

    The transaction is built within the boundaries of the permit. Parameters that violate permit constraints are rejected before signing.

  5. 5

    Execution Validation

    Pre-flight simulation verifies slippage bounds, protocol allowlists, and output constraints. The transaction is fail-closed if any check fails.

  6. 6

    Receipt Anchoring

    A cryptographic receipt captures the policy evaluation, permit details, execution outcome, and settlement data for tamper-evident audit.

Policy Engine Internals

The policy engine is the first enforcement boundary. It evaluates every intent against a deterministic rule set with zero probabilistic logic.

Deterministic rule evaluation

Every policy rule produces the same output for the same input. No probabilistic logic, no model inference in the critical path.

Capability-scoped permits

Permits grant the minimum set of capabilities required for a single operation. Scope cannot be widened after issuance.

TTL and nonce enforcement

Every permit carries a time-to-live and a single-use nonce. Expired or replayed permits are rejected automatically.

Domain separation

Permits are scoped to a specific domain (TruCore ATF + environment). Cross-domain reuse is structurally invalid.

Replay protection

Nonce tracking combined with domain separation ensures no permit can be submitted more than once, across any context.

Enforcement Model

ATF enforces a strict security posture. Every default is deny. Every exception is explicit. Every override is impossible at the agent layer.

Fail-closed default

If a policy rule cannot be evaluated, or if any check is ambiguous, the transaction is blocked. Silence is a denial.

Explicit allowlists

Only pre-approved program IDs, token mints, and protocol endpoints are reachable. Everything else is rejected by default.

Hard invariants vs soft guidance

Hard invariants (spend caps, TTLs, protocol allowlists) cannot be overridden. Soft guidance (warnings, telemetry) is informational only.

No agent-side self-approval

Agents cannot issue, extend, or modify their own permits. Approval authority is external to the agent runtime.

Threat Mitigation Matrix

Each threat vector maps to a specific enforcement layer within the ATF pipeline.

ThreatMitigation Layer
Unbounded executionPermit TTL + scoped capabilities
Slippage exploitationExecution validator with hard slippage bounds
Protocol driftAllowlist registry restricting reachable programs
Replay attackNonce + domain separation on every permit
Audit opacityTamper-evident cryptographic receipts

For teams already building

Design Partner Program

Working with a limited cohort of early teams integrating ATF into production trading bots on Solana. This is not a waitlist - it is hands-on integration support.

Includes:

  • • Dedicated partner API key tier
  • • Integration guidance and policy design review
  • • Direct access to engineering