Life of a Mandate

AUMP treats mandate state as an enforcement boundary, not a display label.

Lifecycle States

State	Autonomous action allowed?	Meaning
draft	No	Created but not accepted.
presented	No	Shown to the principal but not active.
active	Yes, within scope	Usable for autonomous action.
suspended	No	Temporarily inactive.
revoked	No	Permanently inactive.
expired	No	Past expires_at.
superseded	No	Replaced by a newer mandate.

Flow

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> draft
  draft --> presented
  presented --> active
  active --> suspended
  suspended --> active
  active --> revoked
  active --> expired
  active --> superseded
  revoked --> [*]
  expired --> [*]
  superseded --> [*]

Activation Requirements

Before a runtime may act autonomously, it must verify:

• schema validity;
• status is active;
• issued_at and expires_at are valid;
• authority mode and objective bounds are present;
• the action is inside purpose and permission scope;
• revocation is not known;
• disclosure policy is enforceable;
• escalation policy is enforceable.

Revocation

Runtimes must stop autonomous action as soon as revocation is known. If a runtime cannot check revocation live, it should use short-lived mandates and append evidence that identifies the revocation freshness policy used.

Supersession

When a mandate is superseded, downstream references should include the old mandate ID and the new active mandate ID in evidence. This lets reviewers explain which policy controlled each action.