Only authorized action reaches the system that can execute it.

• Authority-envelope validationSignature, content digest, principal and issuing domain verified locally.
• Mission-scope enforcementThe instruction must fall inside the mission, area, object set and direction of the envelope.
• Lease validationThe node's signed lease must be valid and must outlast the action.
• Trusted-time checksTime uncertainty must be within bound; unknown time refuses authority.
• Local revocation stateThe most recent signed revocation state and epoch floor are applied before acceptance.
• Bounded disconnected operationEnforcement continues inside the lease when links fail, and stops at expiry.
• Fail-closed behaviorAny check that cannot be completed results in rejection.
• Evidence before and after the effectAcceptance recorded before release; the system's result recorded after.
• Synchronization through Tunnel SovereignAuthority state first on reconnection, then queued work re-authorized item by item.

When the link to the authority domain is lost, Verity Edge keeps enforcing the signed lease it holds: the capabilities, scope, epoch floors, validity window and policy version issued to it. Decisions made in that state are recorded as offline decisions. A disconnected node cannot grant new authority, extend its own lease, change policy, or satisfy a quorum whose approvers are absent.

When the lease expires, the node stops accepting instructions and shows exactly what stopped and why. Prolonged isolation ends in loss of capability, not in extended autonomy.

1. Authority state firstRevocations, epochs and policy are applied locally before anything else moves.
2. Re-authorize queued workEach queued item is checked again. Work whose grant was withdrawn is not released.
3. Append evidenceOffline records are appended with their local sequence and time uncertainty, not renumbered.
4. Preserve conflictsData conflicts are kept as contradictions rather than silently overwritten.

Verity Edge runs as close to the operational system as the environment allows: as a virtual machine, on a server, or on ARM and x86 hardware. Adapters for sensors and operational systems are built with the SDK and Integration Framework and delivered as signed components through Verity Forge.

Verity Edge governs whether an instruction reaches an operational system. It does not govern what a person does in the physical world after receiving one, and no software boundary reaches there.