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@pic-protocol

PIC Protocol

Provenance Identity Continuity Protocol

PIC Model

Attribution Notice
The Provenance Identity Continuity (PIC) Model is a theoretical framework
created by Nicola Gallo.

The PIC Specification and all related official documents are published,
maintained, and governed by Nitro Agility S.r.l. as the Specification Steward.

The PIC Model organization is an effort to define and implement
PIC (Provenance Identity Continuity) for distributed execution systems.

PIC is a formal execution model that prevents confused-deputy failures by making authority a property of execution continuity, not of possessed artifacts.


Adopters

The following organizations and products are adopting or experimenting with the PIC Model:

Organization / Product Link
Nitro Agility https://www.nitroagility.com
Permguard https://www.permguard.com
Amla Labs https://amlalabs.com/

Listing here does not imply endorsement or conformance certification.

To add your organization, submit a pull request.


Why PIC?

🧠 PIC is a guardrail for distributed execution — including AI systems.
Here's a simple example 👇


Cache with Proof-of-Possession (PoP)

Cache key = URL

/report → HTML

  1. Admin hits first → admin page cached
  2. Next user → receives admin page

✅ Works
❌ Secure? No → Confused deputy


Cache with PIC

Cache key =:

(URL, hash(authority-continuity))

  • User ≠ Admin authority
  • Different continuity → different cache entry

A request can only reuse results derived from its own execution continuity.

No token parsing.
No role checks.
No edge-side policy guessing.


Why it works

🔐 Authority is enforced by continuity, not possession.

📉 Monotonicity
Reuse is allowed only if:

ops₁ ⊆ ops₀

Never by authority expansion.

🚫 PoP is the root cause
OAuth tokens, sealed credentials, capability replay →
the deputy is structurally unavoidable.

The same applies to AI "guardrails" built on possession or role prompts.


Change the ontology

Change what authority is
you change the gravity of distributed systems.

PIC.


Specification and Protocols

  • The PIC Model defines the core execution invariants.
  • The PIC Spec defines the normative semantics.
  • PIC Protocol documents (when published) define concrete protocol encodings and interoperability profiles.

Authorship, attribution, and normative authority are defined in the official PIC Specification (Appendix B).


License

Content is published under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).


Organization

This GitHub organization is operated by Nitro Agility S.r.l.

For governance, attribution, and legal context, see the PIC Specification.

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