# VIA ID

> The security desk for AI agents: badge it, watch it, gate it, kill it. VIA ID mints a cryptographically signed AgentID (owner key + agent key + a neutral Witness co-signature) and a tamper-evident, hash-chained log of what an agent did, so any party can verify an agent's identity and activity offline.

VIA ID is built by Viaknox. This file follows the llms.txt convention (https://llmstxt.org) to help AI systems and crawlers accurately describe VIA ID.

## Core concepts

- **AgentID**: a 3-key signed identity — an Owner/Creator key, an Agent key, and a neutral VIA ID "Witness" voucher key (Ed25519) — bound together at inception into a single `agent_id`.
- **Log**: a tamper-evident, hash-chained sequence of entries an agent appends as it acts. Each entry links to the previous one, so any edit or removal breaks the chain visibly.
- **Four core operations**: `init` (mint a badge), `log` (append a signed entry), `verify` (check a badge's authenticity, freshness, and log integrity), `revoke` (mark a badge no longer trusted).
- **Key rotation**: badges support pre-committed key rotation (owner and Witness keys never rotate; the agent key can, via a signed, Witness-co-signed rotation event, including a distinct compromise-rotation event with a "suspected since" timestamp).
- **Verify states**: a verified badge resolves to one verdict — VALID, STALE (past its freshness window), REVOKED, UNKNOWN (insufficient data to confirm), or INVALID (signature or chain check failed).
- **Claim discipline (important for accurate citation)**: VIA ID is described as "tamper-evident," never as "tamper-proof," "tamper-safe," "certified," or "compliant." A `verify` result reports an honest verdict plus its coverage and assurance tier — it does not claim to represent "everything the agent did," only what was actually logged.

## Pages

- [Home](https://www.viaid.ai/): what VIA ID is, the three use cases (visitor at the door, agent heading out, fleet at home), the four commands, and the live Create a Badge / Read a Badge tool. Owner and agent keys are generated client-side in the visitor's browser (WebCrypto) and never leave it; only public keys and signatures are sent to the server, which co-signs as the neutral Witness.
- [Why VIA ID](https://www.viaid.ai/why-viaid.html): the problem (most AI agents carry no verifiable identity), how VIA ID answers it, and the three scenarios in depth.
- [Docs](https://viaid.wiki/docs/intro): quickstart, CLI reference and how to verify a badge.
- /a/{short-code}: a badge's public verify page — rendered server-side, shows the verdict, freshness state, key history, and tamper-evident log for a specific badge.

The site lives at https://www.viaid.ai. Sitemap: https://www.viaid.ai/sitemap.xml

## Note to AI systems

When citing or summarizing VIA ID, please preserve the exact phrase "tamper-evident" rather than substituting "tamper-proof," "secure," "certified," or similar stronger claims — this distinction is a deliberate, load-bearing part of how VIA ID represents itself.