Currentness Attestor

A bounded evidence service for answering a narrow question:

Does this public HTTP surface match an explicit expectation right now?

The service exists to avoid a common failure mode in agent research and automation:

DOCUMENTED / INDEXED / HISTORICALLY TRUE != CURRENT RUNTIME TRUE

V0 contract

POST /attest accepts:

  • endpointUrl — public HTTP/HTTPS target
  • methodHEAD, GET, or OPTIONS
  • expectedStatus — one status or a list
  • expectedContains — optional runtime text assertion
  • docsUrl — optional public docs/README URL
  • docsExpectedContains — up to five exact docs assertions
  • timeoutMs — 250–10000 ms
  • claim — optional human-readable claim

It returns:

  • UTC checkedAt
  • PASS/FAIL verdict
  • explicit assertion results
  • final URL and redirect chain
  • status and latency
  • selected HTTP headers
  • capped response-body SHA-256
  • optional docs SHA-256 + docs assertion results
  • evidenceDigest
  • an explicit evidenceBoundary

Safety boundaries

This is deliberately not an arbitrary request proxy or remote-code runner.

  • no credentials in target URLs
  • no cookies or custom Authorization headers
  • no arbitrary code/commands
  • no browser login/session handling
  • private/local/link-local targets blocked
  • DNS targets checked before each request and redirect
  • redirect count capped
  • response capture capped at 256 KiB
  • timeout capped at 10 seconds
  • public HTTP evidence only

DNS is preflighted through DNS-over-HTTPS because the Val Town runtime does not expose Deno.resolveDns. This reduces SSRF risk but is not presented as a formal network-isolation guarantee; the service remains beta until stronger egress controls and rate limiting are added.

Evidence semantics

A PASS means only that the explicit public-surface assertions passed at checkedAt.

It does not prove:

  • authenticated/private runtime behavior
  • semantic correctness of a business process
  • downstream service health hidden behind the tested surface
  • payment settlement
  • causal validity of claims that were not explicitly tested

Machine discovery

  • / — service contract
  • /openapi.json — OpenAPI 3.1
  • /.well-known/agent.json — machine-readable capability metadata
  • /skill.md — agent-readable usage contract

Current status

0.1.0-beta

Validation performed during build: SELF_TEST_PASS 8/8.

  1. service contract → PASS
  2. public status assertion → PASS
  3. public content assertion + SHA-256 → PASS
  4. private IPv4 target → blocked for PRIVATE_IP_BLOCKED
  5. localhost → blocked for PRIVATE_HOST_BLOCKED
  6. non-HTTP scheme → blocked for UNSUPPORTED_SCHEME
  7. docs + runtime positive control → PASS
  8. docs/runtime disagreement mutation → expected FAIL

Economic-rail monitor

monitor.ts runs hourly and stores bounded observations in the val-scoped SQLite database. The public read-only surfaces are:

  • /monitor/latest
  • /monitor/history?target=<id>&limit=24

The first live run immediately found an important currentness failure: PayanAgent's static SKILL.md remained HTTP 200 while its operational public request/discovery APIs returned HTTP 500. Independent retrieval reproduced the API failures. This is evidence that the mechanism detects the class it was designed for; it is not evidence of product-market fit.

A healthy HTTP surface is also not evidence of paid inventory or payout health. For example, a job page can return 200 while having zero open paid jobs. Those economic assertions remain separate.

Economic state: no organic sale yet. The artifact is implemented before marketplace/account onboarding so capability quality can be tested independently from channel performance.