trust-systems-meta-model

OASF Publication Guidance for TSMM Profiles

Purpose

This guide explains how to publish a TSMM-described system through an OASF-facing surface without losing the trust semantics that matter for assurance, review, or downstream operational decisions.

The goal is not to restate all TSMM content inside OASF. The goal is to publish enough machine-readable information so the following can still be recovered later:

Publication design principles

1. Preserve accountable authority

Every published profile should make the accountable operator or publisher explicit. A consumer should not have to guess who stands behind the described agent, service, or evaluation surface.

2. Publish references, not flattened prose

Where possible, publish stable references to profiles, controls, evidence bundles, and evaluations rather than restating them informally in free text.

3. Keep effect semantics visible

If the published profile is meant to support trust-relevant decisions, include enough structure to show what kind of downstream effect is being enabled, constrained, warned on, or denied.

4. Surface lifecycle state

If revocation, expiry, suspension, or review state matters, the publication should expose how those lifecycle states are represented and where authoritative updates are expected.

Minimum publication fields

A TSMM-aware OASF publication should make the following visible either directly or through dereferenceable references:

Publication concern Expected publication content
Subject identity Stable identifier for the described system, agent, or service
Publisher accountability Operator or publisher reference
Trust profile Applicable policy bundle, baseline, or assurance profile
Evidence references URIs or identifiers for evidence bundles and referred evaluations
Assessment linkage Structured pointer to current or latest evaluation output
Lifecycle semantics Revocation, suspension, expiry, and review handling
Extension semantics Any ecosystem-specific module or extension contract
  1. Model the system in TSMM using the graph layer.
  2. Bind the system to the relevant ecosystem semantics.
  3. Validate the graph, examples, bindings, and test vectors.
  4. Publish an OASF-facing record that points to the stable TSMM-aligned control, evidence, and evaluation references.
  5. Ensure that lifecycle updates can be surfaced without changing the semantic meaning of the published subject.

Evidence and evaluation pattern

A good publication pattern keeps evidence and evaluation separable:

That separation matters for contestability and audit. It avoids turning a publication surface into an opaque badge.

Worked example

See examples/profiles/oasf-publication-profile.json for a simple graph-oriented profile showing how an OASF-facing publication pattern can preserve publisher identity, policy linkage, evidence references, and assessment traceability.