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Trust Flow

Trust flow describes how activity becomes decision-ready intelligence in Portable Trust Infrastructure.

High-level flow

Detailed sequence

Flow stages

1. Activity capture

A trust producer observes verifiable activity — repayment, lease completion, employment verification, merchant transaction, or community endorsement. The producer maps activity to a catalogued event_type and context_id.

2. Identity resolution

Before ingest, the producer resolves the local entity identifier to a pti_id through the Trust Registry. Resolution may be deterministic (exact identifier match) or probabilistic (scored candidate match).

3. Event ingest

The producer submits a canonical trust event to the Trust Exchange. The exchange validates schema version, producer entitlement, and idempotency.

4. Signal materialization

Accepted events produce trust signals — normalized, context-bound representations suitable for graph queries and scoring. Signals retain provenance links to source events.

5. Intelligence refresh

The Trust Intelligence Engine updates context scores, confidence bands, driver weights, and coverage gaps. Refresh may be synchronous for low-latency tiers or asynchronous for batch contexts.

6. Trust lookup

A trust consumer searches for a subject and requests a context-scoped report at an entitled tier. The policy gateway enforces consent, purpose, and data minimization before returning fields.

7. Verification and decision

Consumers verify report authenticity (QR, API verify endpoint, or signature) and incorporate outcomes into underwriting, onboarding, hiring, or compliance workflows.

Parallel paths

PathDescription
Assertion publishVerifiers publish signed assertions directly to exchange
EndorsementCommunity or institutional endorsements create graph edges
External screeningDirectory miss routes to external verification with separate billing
Correction / retractionProducers issue lifecycle events that supersede prior signals

Failure branches

  • Validation failure → producer receives PTI-400x; no signal created.
  • Policy denial → PTI-403x; event rejected at exchange.
  • Consent missing → consumer receives PTI-4033 at lookup.
  • Thin data → report returns explicit coverage_gaps rather than implied approval.