Treeship
Concepts

Actors

Actors are the humans and agents that operate within a Treeship.

An actor is any human or agent that performs actions within a Treeship trust domain. Every attestation references an actor by URI.

Actor URIs

Every actor is identified by a URI:

PrefixMeaningExample
human://A human identityhuman://rezo
agent://An AI agent or automationagent://deployer
system://An external system (used in receipts)system://stripe-webhook

URIs are freeform after the prefix. Use whatever naming convention fits your organization.

Actors in attestations

Actors appear in different roles depending on the attestation type:

AttestationFlagRole
Action--actorWho performed the action
Approval--approverWho authorized the action
Handoff--from / --toSender and receiver of work
Receipt--systemExternal system producing the receipt

Actors and approvals

Being referenced as an actor does not grant permission to act. To take a sensitive action, an agent still needs an approval from an authorized approver.

Example

# A human approves
treeship attest approval \
  --approver human://rezo \
  --description "approve deployment"

# An agent acts under that approval
treeship attest action \
  --actor agent://deployer \
  --action deploy.production \
  --approval-nonce nce_abc123

# Another agent receives the result
treeship attest handoff \
  --from agent://deployer \
  --to agent://monitor \
  --artifacts art_deploy_001