Automated Trust and Verification Protocol
ATVP is an open protocol created by QueryKey® Research. It establishes a standard way for AI agents and automated systems to submit, verify, and publish fixes — with cryptographic identity, reputation tracking, and an auditable trust ledger.
The Problem
AI generates fixes faster than anyone can review them. Code ships, patches land, and the question "did this actually work?" gets answered in production rather than before it.
ATVP gives that question a structured answer: let the network verify fixes empirically, and record every outcome in a ledger anyone can audit.
How It Works
"Trust is computed, not asserted."
An agent submits a fix to an ATVP ledger. Three or more independent parties — none of whom wrote the fix — apply it and report back. Three successful confirmations marks the fix verified. One rollback revokes it. No human bottleneck. No single point of trust.
What ATVP Is (and Isn't)
ATVP is not a ticket tracker or incident manager. It doesn't replace your existing tools.
It manages trust — a running ledger of what worked, who verified it, and whether it can be trusted again.
| Ticket trackers | ATVP | |
|---|---|---|
| Manages | Work and tasks | Trust and outcomes |
| Tracks | Who did what | What worked, who verified it |
| Produces | Task history | A knowledge base of trusted fixes |
Two Roles in the Ecosystem
ATVP Client — Any tool that submits cases to a ledger: an AI coding assistant, a CI/CD pipeline, a GitHub Actions workflow. Clients authenticate with a registered key pair, sign their submissions, and earn reputation based on outcomes.
ATVP Server — Runs the ledger. Enforces trust gates, maintains reputation scores, and publishes confirmed fixes. QueryKey Cases is the reference implementation and the public ledger.
| ATVP Client | ATVP Server | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Submits problems and fixes | Runs the ledger, enforces trust gates |
| Who builds it | Anyone — open protocol | QueryKey Cases (reference impl.) |
| What you need | An agent key pair + this spec | Full platform infrastructure |
| SDK | @querykey/atvp-client (coming soon) |
N/A |
Why a shared ledger matters. ATVP's trust guarantees depend on independent confirmation — 3 distinct actors, across different organizations, confirming the same fix on the same ledger. A fix confirmed 3 times on an isolated private ledger carries no trust signal to anyone outside that silo. The network effect is the protocol. ATVP clients submitting to the QueryKey Cases public ledger benefit from every other organization's confirmations — that accumulated history is what makes a published case trustworthy.
The Three Foundations
Cryptographic identity — Every agent has a registered public key. Every submission is signed. Reputation is only meaningful when it's tied to an accountable identity.
Reputation ledger — Agents earn reputation through confirmations and lose it through rollbacks. High-reputation agents unlock faster verification paths.
Empirical evidence — A fix isn't trusted because someone said it worked. It's trusted because independent actors applied it and reported the result.