Mirror Federation
Mirror federation is the mechanism by which multiple Mirror endpoints — operated by independent publishers across different domains and organisations — are discovered, aggregated, and queried as a coherent network without central coordination.
This is defined in P64 and P65.
The problem federation solves
A single publisher’s Mirror at /.well-known/aiep/ is useful in isolation. But the value of AIEP scales with the number of publishers. An AI agent that must query each domain individually cannot build a cross-organisation evidence picture efficiently.
Without federation:
- An AI agent querying a pharmaceutical company’s Mirror has no automatic way to discover the independent clinical auditor’s Mirror that corroborates it
- A regulator cannot query all regulated entities in a sector from a single starting point
- A compliance team cannot aggregate evidence from subsidiaries across jurisdictions without manual configuration
Mirror federation solves this by allowing publishers to declare, in machine-readable form, which other Mirrors they federate with — and at what trust level.
How federation works
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | Publisher A declares a federation.json manifest at /.well-known/aiep/federation.json |
| 2 | The manifest lists every Mirror A federates with: domain, trust level, scope, last verified timestamp |
| 3 | A retrieval agent queries A’s Mirror, discovers federation.json |
| 4 | The agent traverses each federated Mirror in the manifest |
| 5 | Results from all federated Mirrors are assembled into a unified result set |
| 6 | Each result carries its originating Mirror’s issuer_did — provenance is never masked |
| 7 | The agent weights results by the trust level declared in A’s federation manifest |
The federation manifest
Published at /.well-known/aiep/federation.json:
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
federation_version | Federation protocol version |
federates_with | Array of federated Mirror declarations (see below) |
federation_scope | Which artefact types are federated: ALL or specific schema types |
trust_model | How federated results are weighted: EQUAL, WEIGHTED, or ISSUER_REGISTRY |
manifest_hash | SHA-256 of this manifest in canonical form |
manifest_signature | Publisher signature over manifest_hash |
Each entry in federates_with:
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
mirror_domain | Domain of the federated Mirror |
trust_level | HIGH, STANDARD, or LOW |
scope | Which artefact types to include from this Mirror |
last_verified | ISO 8601 timestamp of most recent verification of this federation link |
Trust levels
| Level | What it requires | Effect on aggregated results |
|---|---|---|
HIGH | Federated Mirror is a registered certified AIEP publisher — DID resolvable from registry | Full weight contribution to evidence aggregation |
STANDARD | Mirror is structurally conformant — discovery files valid, schema conformance verified | Standard weight contribution |
LOW | Mirror is known but not validated by declaring publisher | Results included but flagged unverified_federation |
A retrieval agent may apply its own trust policy on top of the declaring publisher’s manifest. An enterprise deployment may refuse to include LOW trust results entirely, regardless of what the declaring publisher permits.
Global Mirror Registry (P65)
P65 defines the global federation registry — a machine-readable index of all known AIEP Mirrors:
| Endpoint | Contents |
|---|---|
/.well-known/aiep/registry/mirrors.json | Index of all registered Mirror endpoints |
/.well-known/aiep/registry/mirrors/<domain>.json | Individual Mirror registration record with certification level, artefact types, and last verified timestamp |
Registration is open. Any conformant Mirror can register. Registration is distinct from certification — a Mirror can be listed in the registry at STANDARD level without being a certified issuer.
Use cases
| Use case | How federation applies |
|---|---|
| Enterprise compliance | Aggregate compliance evidence from subsidiaries and third-party auditors, verified against each issuer DID |
| Regulated sector oversight | A regulator federates the Mirrors of all regulated entities and queries across the sector in a single traversal |
| Clinical trial aggregation | Federate trial site Mirrors under the principal investigator’s Mirror to assemble multi-site evidence |
| Supply chain provenance | Query all supplier Mirrors starting from the primary supplier’s federation manifest |
| AI knowledge retrieval | An AI agent discovers the full relevant Mirror network for a domain query from a single well-known entry point |
Patents
- P64 — Mirror Federation Protocol and Trust Level Declaration. Filed November 2025.
- P65 — Global Mirror Registry. Filed November 2025.
Related
- Mirror — what a Machine Mirror is
- Mirror Adoption — whether and how to adopt a Mirror
- Mirror: Implement — technical implementation
- Registry — publisher and issuer registration
- AI Retrieval — how agents traverse federated Mirror networks
- Patents — P64, P65