Agent Contracts
The Agent Contract is the interface that makes agentic work governable across identity, inputs, outputs, tools, cost, confidence, HITL, observability, and decision trace.
What a Surface Is
Every agent in a KCC-conformant organization implements nine surfaces. The first seven are operational; the last two are cognitive. A surface is a structured field in the agent's contract that the kernel validates before the agent is registered, that meta-agents (Butler, Token Guard) consult at invocation time, and that the Inspector Pipeline reads to detect patterns.
Surfaces are declared once per agent version. The kernel validates surface declarations before registration and rejects agents with missing or malformed surfaces.
Surfaces 8 and 9 are the most distinctive technical contribution of KCC. Most agent frameworks specify some form of Surfaces 1-7. Few specify confidence and decision trace as structured first-class fields enforced by the kernel.
The Nine Surfaces
| # | Surface | Layer | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identity | Operational | Uniquely identify the agent and its provenance |
| 2 | Input Schema | Operational | Declare what the agent accepts as input |
| 3 | Output Schema | Operational | Declare what the agent produces |
| 4 | Declared Tools | Operational | Exhaustive tool declaration; lethal trifecta detection |
| 5 | Cost Envelope | Operational | Resource budgets and ceilings |
| 6 | HITL/HOTL | Operational | Trust mode declaration |
| 7 | Observability | Operational | Telemetry commitment |
| 8 | Confidence | Cognitive | Computed confidence in output |
| 9 | Decision Trace | Cognitive | Structured record of how the output was produced |
Why Nine Surfaces
The number is not arbitrary. The first seven address operational concerns that every agent must declare to operate within the KCC contract: how to identify the agent (1), what it accepts (2) and produces (3), what tools it uses (4), what it costs (5), how much human oversight it requires (6), and what telemetry it emits (7). The last two address cognitive concerns that distinguish KCC from less mature frameworks: how confident it is in its output (8), and how it arrived at that output (9).
The cognitive layer is what makes the system learnable. Without confidence and decision trace, the system can run agents but cannot learn from them. The Inspector Pipeline depends entirely on Surface 9. See Identity Surface, Input and Output Surfaces, Tools and Cost Surfaces, HITL and Observability, and Confidence and Decision Trace for the individual surface specifications.
Surface Interactions
The surfaces are not independent. Several interactions are structurally important: Declared Tools (4) determines HITL/HOTL (6) because lethal trifecta detection forces HITL; Cost Envelope (5) constrains Observability (7) because telemetry that exceeds the envelope is itself a problem; Confidence (8) influences HITL/HOTL (6) because low confidence triggers HITL escalation; and Decision Trace (9) reflects all other surfaces. The kernel enforces these interactions. An agent declaration that is internally inconsistent (e.g., declared HOTL but flagged trifecta in tools) is rejected at registration.
A Complete Agent Declaration
A complete agent declaration includes all nine surfaces. Surfaces 8 and 9 are populated per-invocation in the output, but the schemas referenced are part of the agent's declaration. Here is the skeleton:
# Agent: <name> # Version: <semver> # Maturity: <L1|L2|L3> identity: # Surface 1 # ... input_schema: # Surface 2 # ... output_schema: # Surface 3 # ... declared_tools: # Surface 4 # ... cost_envelope: # Surface 5 # ... hitl_hotl: # Surface 6 # ... observability: # Surface 7 # ... # Surfaces 8 and 9 are populated per-invocation in the output, # but the schemas referenced are part of the agent's declaration.