The Trust Vocabulary — Every Term on One Page

For: anyone who has to say these words in a room — stakeholders, reviewers, IT, and the AI agents that parse this page. One definition per term, who acts on it, and the confusions that muddy meetings.

The whole system in one sentence: privacy consents → a permission or a license authorizes → a grant opens the vault door → the record of consumption writes who and from what source → the receipt proves it later, offline → the fingerprint stands in for anyone the system doesn't know.

Permission

What a subject may do in the platform: capabilities derived from roles (crm:evidence:read, design:brand:theme), granted by invitation, checked on every call, gone when the role changes. Nothing purchased, nothing durable. Acts on it: Owner/Admin grants · team members and agents hold · CISO governs the ruleset.

Privacy

What may be done with a person's data: consent categories, opt-outs, data rights — enforced fail-closed in the data path, not in the banner. The only object on this page whose owner sits outside the company. Acts on it: the customer owns · the DPO governs · every pipeline obeys.

License

The documented right: a signed, durable record of terms — who, what scope, what duration. The deed. It survives expiry, revocation, and key rotation, because the record — not the file — is the product. Acts on it: the buyer owns · the platform issues · the auditor reads.

Grant

The operational state of an open door: access conferred on one subject for one resource, right now — revocable per subject in real time, checked at serve, every use ledgered. Time-boxed grants (not_after) are how "a month of access" is built. Acts on it: the platform enforces · Owner/Release confers and revokes · the subject exercises.

License vs Grant vs Permission — the scene: the license is the deed (you bought a month of this asset); the grant is the unlocked door (the vault will serve you, this asset, until the 30th); the permission is the job function (you may pull evidence CSVs because you hold the audit role). One license can mint many grants; revoking a grant never rewrites the deed; permissions exist with no license at all.

Record of Consumption

What actually happened: the append-only ledger of serves, plays, scans — who, what, when, and from what source (channel stamp, origin, coarse geography), each row sealing the one before it. Royalty statement, compliance record, and marketing signal in one object. Acts on it: Data & Audit reads · Revenue BA reads for attribution · a regulator can subpoena it.

Receipt

The portable proof handed to the counterparty: a signed token (or its QR) that anyone verifies offline against the published public key — no account, no trust in the platform. It outlives the access it documents. Acts on it: the licensee carries · their IT verifies · nobody has to be believed.

Verify

The act performed on a receipt — by anyone, any number of times, forever: fetch the published public key the receipt names, test the signature, check the time window. No account, no call to the platform; verification works against the issuer, not through them. The receipt is the claim; verify is the test the claim survives. And each server-side verify is itself an event on the chain-of-custody register — checking the record extends the record. Acts on it: anyone — that is the point.

Fingerprint

The stand-in for identity where none is shared — two distinct senses, do not mix them:

1. Actor fingerprint — a salted, one-way hash marking a distinct verifier without storing who they are ("checked by 2 parties, 5 times").
2. Key fingerprint — the hash of a secret used to verify a rotation happened without the secret ever entering a log or a chat.

Acts on it: the platform counts with the first · the Security Human ceremonies with the second.

Vault

The custody plane: encrypted storage whose only exit is the grant gate. Each asset sealed under its own key, versions immutable, every serve in the hash-chained ledger. The opposite of a file at a URL. Acts on it: Release deposits · grant-holders withdraw · Data & Audit reviews the chain.

Token

A sealed credential you verify: three base64url parts, signed by the platform's key, carrying its claims (subject, scope, expiry) inside itself. Bearer-ish while alive; dies on expiry or revocation; provable offline. Acts on it: the holder presents · any verifier checks against the public key set.

Session bookmark

A pointer you look up: the UUID a consent event mints, naming one visit's record. Contains nothing, grants nothing — like a receipt number, it says which record; the server decides who may read it. Never call a bookmark a key. Acts on it: the data plane joins on it · role-holders dereference it.

Key pair

The platform's pen: the private half ceremony-held and never leaving the server; the public half published for the world. It signs licenses, receipts, and mandates — one pair, thousands of signatures, rotated by named generations with no flag day. People and agents hold signed documents, not keys. Acts on it: the Security Human ceremonies · everyone else only ever touches the public half.

Mandate

A license's agent-shaped sibling: the signed document under which an AI agent may act — capped, scoped, time-boxed, revocable — so agentic checkout runs on authority that can be verified, not on a shared secret. Acts on it: the customer signs · the agent operates within it · any party verifies it offline.

Entitlement

The account-shaped sum of what a subject holds: features, capabilities, scopes — minted by purchase or role, carried by the identity spine, projected into tokens on demand. The bridge between "bought it" and "may do it." Acts on it: purchase mints · the platform projects · every gate consults.

The GitHub bridge (for anyone who knows git — that's everyone's IT)

You already trust this exact machinery every time you use GitHub; the platform just applies it to business records. Three mappings:

• A commit SHA = the hash-chained ledger. A git commit's hash includes its parent's hash — precisely the ledger's trick: each row seals the one before it, so history can be visibly broken but never quietly edited. Anyone can recompute the chain; no keys involved. A hash proves what — this exact content, untouched — but never who: a bare SHA has no author.
• A signed commit's "Verified" badge = receipt + verify. A signed commit is a hash sealed with a private key, and GitHub checks it against the published public key. That green badge is exactly what crm-sync.dev/verify does with a receipt: same math, same trust model, different subject matter.
• The layering: SHA-256 identifies (the firmware image, the record hash, each ledger row) · the signature attests (the receipt, the certificate, the mandate) · the chain orders it all in tamper-evident time. **Hash for what, signature for who, chain for when.**

One line for the room: a SHA says "this is the thing, untouched"; a receipt says "this is the thing, untouched, and we sealed it — check for yourself."

The confusions that cost meetings

• A bookmark is not a key. One is a pointer, one is a credential. Sharing a bookmark shares nothing; sharing a credential shares everything until revoked.
• A license is not a grant. Ending access (grant) does not rewrite the contract (license). Auditors read licenses; servers check grants.
• A permission is not a license. Roles are employment-shaped and mutable; licenses are purchase-shaped and durable.
• A receipt is not the record. The record is the platform's ledger; the receipt is the counterparty's proof. They corroborate each other precisely because they are held by different parties.
• A fingerprint is not a signature. A signature proves authorship of a document; a fingerprint proves distinctness (of an actor) or possession (of a key) without revealing anything else.
• A hash is not a signature. A hash (a git-SHA-style number) proves the content is untouched; a signature is a hash sealed with the private key and also proves who sealed it. Anyone can hash; only the keyholder can sign.
• Possession is not authority. The system's first principle. Everything above exists so that holding a thing — a link, a bookmark, even a token past its expiry — confers exactly and only what was signed.

Companion reading: Verify It Yourself — the IT Sheet · Rotate a Key in Three Steps · Firmware, SBOM & the Cyber Resilience Act — and the live proof at crm-sync.dev/verify.