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CTEF (Composable Trust Evidence Format) v0.3.1 — substrate collaboration with cheqd DID/VC infra #977

@kenneives

Description

@kenneives

Quick note for awareness — sharing a substrate-layer wire format that composes naturally with cheqd's DID/VC infrastructure for AI agents.

What CTEF is

A wire-format substrate for cross-implementation interop on agent trust attestations — JCS-canonicalized (RFC 8785), Ed25519-signed, claim-type-tagged envelopes. Frozen at v0.3.1 on April 24 2026. Live spec at https://agentgraph.co/.well-known/cte-test-vectors.json. Byte-match validated across 8 independent implementations + 7 canonicalizers + 2 reader-runnable verifier scripts.

Where cheqd and CTEF compose

cheqd ships W3C DID/VC infra with a "/whois" agent challenge protocol; CTEF provides the wire-format envelope for the underlying trust attestations. The two layers are complementary:

  • cheqd handles DID resolution + credential issuance
  • CTEF defines the canonicalization + signature shape that makes those credentials byte-match interoperable across implementations

AgentGraph's interop harness at https://agentgraph.co/.well-known/interop-harness.json shows the current state — eight production implementations including AgentID's did:agentid: method and Foxbook's did:foxbook:{ULID} method composing with the same JCS-canonical envelope.

Why I'm posting

AgentGraph is finalizing a litepaper for May 12 2026 launch ("State of Agent Security 2026") that names cheqd's ASI Alliance partnership and AI agent DID work as a complementary identity-layer effort. Wanted to flag the framing before publish in case there are corrections, or if there's interest in discussing CTEF as a wire-format substrate that cheqd-issued VCs could adopt for cross-implementation byte-match.

What I'm not asking for

No integration commitment, no sponsorship, no review. Just visibility — and an open door if cheqd's roadmap would benefit from a substrate that's already byte-match validated across AgentID, APS, ArkForge, HiveTrust, Foxbook, msaleme, @nobulex/crypto, and AgentGraph.

Substrate is here when ready. Pleased to coordinate.

(Note: posting on cheqd-node since it's the canonical org repo and cheqd doesn't have Discussions enabled — happy to redirect to a more appropriate venue if there's one I'm missing.)

— Kenne Ives, AgentGraph (substrate maintainer for CTEF v0.3.1) | kenne@agentgraph.co

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