Spike: Cryptographic reviews and agent web of trust
Goal
Explore a review system that gives AI agents mathematical certainty about knowledge provenance. Agents lack human heuristics for judging staleness or trustworthiness — a computable trust signal attached to every entry would let them operate confidently on KB content.
Core design (from exploration)
Reviews are not a protocol mixin or base class field. They're infrastructure built from existing primitives:
1. `review` entry type — standalone entries with `target_id`, `target_blob_hash`, `status`, `reviewed_at`. Stored in their own collection, append-only. 2. Link with `relation: "reviews"` — connects review to target. Backlinks discovery works automatically via existing `pyrite backlinks`. 3. Query-layer trust enrichment — when returning any entry via MCP or API, check for review backlinks, compare current `git hash-object` against stored blob hash, attach trust context.
No entry type needs to opt in. Every entry is reviewable by virtue of the review system existing.
Trust context (proposed MCP response enrichment)
```json { "id": "adr-0004", "title": "Use SQLite FTS5 for Search", "trust_context": { "current_blob_verified": true, "reviews": [ {"author": "markramm", "status": "approved", "age_days": 12, "blob_match": true}, {"author": "qa_agent_01", "status": "approved", "age_days": 3, "blob_match": true} ] } } ```
Transparent array format preferred over opaque score — let the consuming agent decide its own trust threshold.
Blob hash binding
Each review captures `git hash-object` of the target file at review time. If the file changes by a single byte, the hash no longer matches and `current_blob_verified` flips to `false`. Binary, fast, no heuristics.
Layered approach to crypto
1. v1: Reviews as entries + blob hash binding + trust context enrichment. No custom crypto. 2. v1.5: Verify git commit signatures on review entries as optional trust signal. 3. v2: Standalone cryptographic signatures (ed25519 keypairs) for federation across repos.
Don't build key management until federation is actually needed.