Agentic AI frameworks define how agents behave, what tools they call, and how they are authenticated. None of them formally specify the entity the agent is acting for. ProxySkill defines that standard.
Trusted delegation requires more than safe code and a well-behaved agent. It requires a complete principal specification — a structured declaration of who is being represented, what they are authorized to do, what they are trying to become, and where the boundaries of autonomous action lie.
— The ProxySkill Thesis
The Principal Gap
Current frameworks ask who the agent is, what it can access, and how its actions are audited. These are necessary questions. They are not sufficient ones. Delegation is a representational act — when an agent acts on behalf of a person or organization, it is acting as that entity in the world.
The question being asked
"Is this agent authorized to do this?"
The question that matters
"Should this agent do this, on behalf of this principal?"
The Answer
Answer a few questions. See your principal specification take shape. This is how it works in practice — an agent conducts this interview, using PRINCIPAL-SKILL.md, then presents the result for your review.
01 Principal type
02 Who are you at your core?
03 Where are you right now?
04 Where are you going?
Standards Process
ProxySkill submitted a public comment to the NIST NCCoE AI Agent Identity and Authorization Concept Paper (March 2026), proposing principal specification as a required artifact in interoperable agent standards. The comment recommends that NIST explicitly develop a specification standard for the Actor layer identified in their own architecture diagram — the entity that initiates agent flows and receives results, but is currently left unspecified.
Security Considerations
PRINCIPAL.md is a text file. Like any text file, it can be modified, forged, or crafted with malicious intent. Understanding the boundaries of this standard is important before deploying it.
Project Status
PRINCIPAL.md is a draft v0.1 specification. It is being developed in public, deliberately early. The window for establishing foundational standards in agentic AI is narrow. ProxySkill is planting a flag.
Spec Version
v0.1
Draft · March 2026
Reference Skill
PRINCIPAL-SKILL.md
v0.1.0 · principal-spec · open source
White Paper
The Missing Layer
April 2026 · CC BY 4.0
NIST Comment
Submitted
March 2026
License
Open
CC BY 4.0
ProxySkill is looking for practitioners, runtime developers, and standards contributors who see the same gap. If you're building agentic systems and thinking about the principal layer, reach out.
dmccleld@gmail.com