# The ontology already existed, so the first release promoted it instead of writing one > Twenty three capability primitives, nine deployment shapes and four barriers were already published as the data pack a game reads. The first release gave them an address and derived five worked ABPs from them, and the thing that took the time was the honesty line rather than the research. *Source: · site v0.5.0 · this file is generated from the same content as the page, so the two cannot drift. Every page on this site has a `.md` twin; internal links below point at them.* --- [Home](../../index.md) / [Articles](../../articles/index.md) / v0.1.0 # The ontology already existed, so the first release promoted it instead of writing one Twenty three capability primitives, nine deployment shapes and four barriers were already published as the data pack a game reads. The first release gave them an address and derived five worked ABPs from them, and the thing that took the time was the honesty line rather than the research. **v0.1.0**, 11 September 2026. [v0.1.0's own release record](../../versions/v0.1.0/index.md). ## The gap the document exists for **You know what you asked for.** Draft the reply, fix the build, summarise the ticket. That is the mandate, and the person who deployed the agent already holds it, whether or not anybody wrote it down. **You do not know what it can do.** The agent runs with an account, on a machine, in a container or on a desktop, with credentials and network access and a set of tools. Everything those permit is the grant. It is almost never enumerated, and when it is, it is larger than the person who deployed it expected. The Agent Behaviour Policy is the document that puts the two on one page. ![The home page of abp.sgit.ai at v0.1.0, with the thesis line as the heading](../../assets/articles/v010-home-hero.png) *The first release's home page. The argument is the heading, and the version badge in the chrome links to that version's own record rather than to a generic changelog, which is one of the five things the house conventions ask a site to verify rather than assume. (abp.sgit.ai at v0.1.0, captured 20 September 2026 from a checkout of the v0.1.0 tag.)* ## The finding that changed the plan The build pack written before this site existed contains one sentence that changed what the first release was: **the ontology the ABP needs already exists, published, and the first job is not to author one.** A game about agent permissions had published its data pack at a stable address: twenty three capability primitives in a `verb.object.reach` grammar, nine named deployment shapes, a barrier glyph on every cell, an undo class on every capability, and an honest measurement note saying that of ninety nine rows, twenty one were measured and the rest derived. > **Promoting an ontology means giving it an address, not a new vocabulary.** Nothing was renamed. Capability ids, barrier ids, undo classes and shape ids are the published ones, the bytes as fetched are served unchanged under `data/upstream/`, and both the build and the gate recompute their hash and refuse to proceed if it disagrees. Two field names changed and the provenance block on each file says which. ## Four objects, and only one of them is written by anybody An ABP is not a document. It is four objects, of which the document is a rendering, and the order they are produced in is the order [the model page](../../model/index.md) teaches them. *[A figure here in the page: the four objects of an ABP drawn side by side rather than stacked. The mandate is elicited, the grant is measured, the delta is derived from both and never authored, and the barrier is recorded once per granted capability. Arrows run from the mandate and the grant into the delta]* **The mandate has to be captured even though it is already known**, because a grant on its own is an inventory and nobody acts on an inventory. That is the whole reason the cheapest object to collect is the one that makes the other three mean something. ## The barrier, which is where the argument actually is For every capability in the grant, an ABP records what stands between the agent and it. There are four kinds, and three of them bound nothing. That is not an opinion about the four rows: it follows from what each one is. *[A figure here in the page: the four barriers, each with an enforced_by edge to what enforces it. Nothing is enforced by nothing; an expectation by the agent reading it; a setting by the agent's own account; and a boundary by something above the grant. The first three enforcers are inside the grant and bound nothing. Only the boundary is outside it]* **The estate published this as a glyph before it named it as a rule.** The game's map already carried all four kinds on every cell, and reading the third and fourth rows together gives you the test: a setting the agent's own account could change is not a control, because the grant includes the ability to remove the bound. [The barrier page](../../model/barriers/index.md) carries the four with their published wording. ## Five examples, derived rather than authored The five worked ABPs in the first release were not written. Every number, every glyph and every row on them is computed from the promoted data at build time, which is what makes the provenance line trustworthy: a page that states twenty one of ninety nine rows measured, and got that from a constant somebody typed, is asserting exactly what the map is careful to qualify. ![A table of the five worked examples with their grant, mandate, excess and unbounded excess counts](../../assets/articles/v010-examples-table.png) *The five examples at v0.1.0, side by side. No column here is a score: excess is a count of capabilities in the grant and not in the mandate, and unbounded excess is how many of those sit at a barrier that is not a control. Neither says whether any of it is acceptable. (abp.sgit.ai at v0.1.0, captured 20 September 2026 from a checkout of the v0.1.0 tag.)* **Read the third one beside the second.** They are the same product, the same machine and the same account, with one setting different. That pair is the argument that an ABP is about the deployment rather than the product, and it is the release's cheapest demonstration: one line in a list and a build. ## The label, and the only number a buyer can move ![The nine field label for a coding agent with confirmations off](../../assets/articles/v010-label.png) *Nine fields, computed, and no score anywhere on them. Excess answers the question the document exists for. Unbounded excess is the only field a control purchase moves, and the gap between the two is the business case for one. (abp.sgit.ai at v0.1.0, captured 20 September 2026 from a checkout of the v0.1.0 tag.)* **Two numbers matter and the label says which.** Every real control put in place shifts one capability into the fourth barrier row and the second number falls. The first one does not move, because the agent can still do the same things: what changed is that some of them are now bounded by something it cannot reach. ## One figure, answering one question The leaflet is complete and it is the wrong shape for the question the document exists to answer, which is how much of the grant has nothing on the mandate side. A reader scanning rows cannot see that without counting. ![The mandate in one column and the grant in the other, with lines joining the capabilities that appear in both](../../assets/articles/v010-figure.png) *The whole encoding is one rule: a mark with no line reaching it is excess. The glyph on every mark is the published barrier, so the figure is readable with the fill removed, and there is no size encoding and no axis of consequence in it. (abp.sgit.ai at v0.1.0, captured 20 September 2026 from a checkout of the v0.1.0 tag.)* ## The prohibitions, each carrying its barrier The enforceable projection of the delta is one sentence per excess capability. **Every one of them carries the barrier it sits at today**, because a prohibition shown without its barrier manufactures assurance. ![A table of prohibitions, each with its barrier today, whether it is enforced, and the layer a control would sit at](../../assets/articles/v010-prohibitions.png) *Twelve of twelve not enforced today. They are sentences, not controls. The right hand column is where a control would have to sit, which is a statement about where enforcement lives and not a recommendation to buy one. (abp.sgit.ai at v0.1.0, captured 20 September 2026 from a checkout of the v0.1.0 tag.)* ## What the release cost, and the number it could not produce The examples were instrumented rather than estimated, because the store has to price an ABP and nobody knew what one costs. The published table says five minutes each and nought questions asked of a human. > **That is the wrong number and the page says so.** The five examples took about four hours in total and essentially all of it went into the generator, the promoted schema and the provenance line. The marginal cost of the sixth, for a shape already in the map, is one line and a build. The number the store needs is what it costs to produce an ABP for a shape that is **not** in the map, where the grant has to be measured rather than looked up, and this site could not tell you that because it had not done one. ## A disagreement recorded rather than resolved The foundation document says that turning confirmations off moves the barrier on every capability in the delta by one row. **In the published data it moves exactly one barrier**, on `execute.process.host`, and that capability is inside the mandate rather than in the delta, because the deployer asked for it. So the label's numbers do not move at all, and the two documents are still materially different. That is a stronger argument for the leaflet and against a headline number than the original wording was, and it is recorded in [v0.1.0's notes](../../versions/v0.1.0/index.md) rather than quietly fixed. The method is to record the gap. [The five examples](../../examples/index.md) · [The capability grammar](../../model/capabilities/index.md) · [The barrier](../../model/barriers/index.md) · [v0.1.0's own release record](../../versions/v0.1.0/index.md) --- *[Site index for agents](../../llms.txt) · [HTML version](https://abp.sgit.ai/articles/an-ontology-that-already-existed/index.html)*