The framework behind Verdra Record.

Inter-Agent Commerce and the Missing Adjudicative Layer

Daniel Litwin

Inter-agent commerce has outpaced the infrastructure required to resolve the disputes it produces. The article isolates the two-agent condition, where both contracting parties act through AI agents with no human review at the moment of consent, and shows why the emerging agentic-commerce protocols (among them MCP, A2A, AP2, x402, Visa TAP, and Mastercard Verifiable Intent) resolve attribution but not adjudication. Reviewing online dispute resolution, the AI-arbitration literature, decentralised dispute resolution, multi-agent systems, and commercial arbitration, it finds that each reaches only part of the problem. It then identifies three mismatches the inherited dispute-resolution infrastructure produces when applied to inter-agent disputes, evidentiary, doctrinal, and institutional, and indicates for each what its resolution would require, including an evidentiary record organised into four strata: transaction, configuration, distributional, and capability.

Update. This draft predates the April 2026 strata revision and the June 2026 Legal Context Protocol. The current production strata are transaction, configuration, behavior, and mandate (see Article B and the Rules); the paper's "distributional" evidence is now a mode of the behavior stratum and "capability" is an auxiliary stratum. The agreed-terms layer the paper treats as absent is now provided by LCP, on which Verdra's adjudicative layer builds.

Evidentiary Architecture for Inter-Agent Commercial Disputes

Daniel Litwin

A companion article specifying the evidence model that an adjudicative layer for AI-agent commerce requires. The article develops a six-strata Evidence Package (transaction, configuration, behavior, mandate, instruction, environment), of which three are production strata captured at dispatch and three are forward-committed under Annex E. It traces seven attribution pathways through which liability may be assigned, and proposes a chain-of-custody architecture sealed at the moment of agent action. Pre-launch versions of the article are revised in lockstep with the Rules; the current rulebook (v0.1) is the controlling reference.

Update. Read alongside the Legal Context Protocol (June 2026). LCP records the agreed terms of an agent transaction; this evidentiary architecture is the complementary conduct record, what the agent did and why, that adjudication additionally requires.

Verdra Rules: A Framework for Inter-Agent Commercial Dispute Resolution

Daniel Litwin

The current canonical pre-launch version of the Verdra Rules. Specifies the six evidence strata (three production, three forward-committed), the seven attribution pathways, the four categories of dispute, the ten governing principles (including the standard of proof at P.8 and procedural fairness at P.10), the strata-conflict and combinatorial-pathway resolution rules, the remedy framework (Tier 1-3 plus consequential damages, specific performance, interim relief, costs, set-off, and prospective remedies), and the procedural architecture for proceedings at machine speed. Annex E (Forward Commitments and Prospective Remedies, with the Coverage Matrix) included. Pre-launch versions are numbered v0.x; v1.0 ships at public launch.

Verdra Technical Specification: Module 1, the Record SDK and Evidence Package Schema

Daniel Litwin

The architect-and-engineer-facing specification for Module 1 (Verdra Record). Defines the Evidence Package schema in canonical form, the integration pattern across runtimes, the cryptographic and timestamping commitments, the storage topology, and the verification path. Modules 2-4 (Forum services) are documented for reference; the Forum is in formation.