Peering Agreement

This Peering Agreement ("Agreement") is between agentcensus ("agentcensus," "we," "us," or "our") and the organisation on whose behalf it is accepted ("you," "your," or the "Organisation"). It is a separate written agreement of the kind section 2 of the Terms of Use ("Terms") contemplates, and it applies only to peering.

Version peering-agreement/2026-10-14 · Legal enquiries to legal@agentcensus.io · See also the Peering Data Processing Agreement and the privacy policy

1. Acceptance

An administrator of the Organisation accepts this Agreement, and the Peering Data Processing Agreement, in the console, on the Organisation's behalf, and represents that they have authority to do so. We record the version accepted, the time, and the person who accepted it. We grant the peering capability only to an organisation that has accepted the versions then current, and never to a personal organisation.

This Agreement adds to the Terms and does not replace them. Where the two conflict on a matter this Agreement covers, this Agreement governs, for peering only. Everything the Terms say about anything else stands.

2. Words used here

• Descriptor: a description of an endpoint, a set of calling agents, or an evidence service the Organisation runs, written and signed by the Organisation and uploaded to the Service.
• Partner: an organisation the Organisation names, by a domain that organisation has verified with us, as one it peers with, or a member of a circle the Organisation belongs to.
• Share: the Organisation's decision that one Partner may receive one Descriptor, until a review date the Organisation sets.
• Pair Agreement: the terms the Organisation and a Partner sign between themselves for a peering, whose digest is recorded with us.
• Disclosed Lines: statements about the Organisation's own agents that the Organisation chooses to disclose to a Partner with a Share.
• Peering Materials: Descriptors, Pair Agreements and Disclosed Lines.
• Relay and Channel: the blind relay we may operate for a peered pair, and one connection the two organisations make through it.

3. Sharing with partners you name

Section 2 of the Terms prohibits providing access to the Service, or to features available only to an organisation, to anyone outside your organisation, and attempting to obtain information the Service withholds from you, including another organisation's private records. Those prohibitions do not apply to the following, which this Agreement allows:

1. sharing a Descriptor with a Partner through the Service;
2. receiving, reading and relying on a Descriptor a Partner shares with you;
3. within a circle, seeing the states the Service shows to members, a steward's view of its own circle, and forwarding your own refusal of admission to the organisation that refused it; and
4. opening and using a Channel with a Partner.

This Agreement does not allow you to pass anything you receive from a Partner to a third organisation through the Service, or to publish a Partner's Descriptors or the fact of a peering. What you and a Partner exchange directly, outside the Service, is governed by your Pair Agreement and not by us.

4. What we may and may not do with your Peering Materials

The licence to Input in section 4 of the Terms does not apply to Peering Materials. Instead, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence, for as long as the Peering Materials are stored with us, to do only the following:

1. store them, check the signature on each Descriptor, and keep the records of disclosure the Service keeps;
2. serve each Descriptor, and each Disclosed Line, to the Partners you have shared it with, and to no one else;
3. show them to the members of your own organisation; and
4. keep backups and copies needed to run the Service, which expire on the schedule that applies to the rest of the Service's data.

We will not:

1. use Peering Materials to develop or improve our Services, to train any model, or for any purpose other than those above;
2. publish them, or any figure, ranking or export derived from them;
3. score, rank, sort or filter organisations, endpoints or agents by them; or
4. add them to the census, or merge them with any other organisation's records.

Relayed messages. We take no right of any kind in what a Channel carries. The relay carries content that the two organisations encrypt for each other, and we cannot read it.

5. Trust readings and floors

Reserved. Before the Service offers circles with a trust floor, or lets your software refuse a Partner on a reading we publish, we will publish a new version of this Agreement covering both. You will need to accept that version before either is offered to you.

6. What you undertake

1. A Descriptor describes only something your organisation operates, under a domain you have verified with us, and is signed with a key your organisation holds.
2. You hold the rights needed to upload your Peering Materials and to have us serve them to the Partners you name.
3. You and each Partner decide, run and are responsible for how your agents reach each other, what passes between them, and how it is protected. We have no role in data the two of you exchange over a path we do not carry.
4. You keep your own keys, credentials and approvals. We never hold them.

7. Withdrawal and ending

1. You may end a Share, a peering or a circle membership at any time. We never prevent or delay that.
2. Ending a Share stops us serving that Descriptor to that Partner. It does not recall a copy the Partner already holds, which stays valid at the Partner's end until the expiry written into it, and it does not revoke anything at your own endpoint. Revoking access at your endpoint is yours to do.
3. Either side may end this Agreement by written notice. We then withdraw the peering capability, and the Organisation's Shares and peerings end. Records of disclosure are kept as the privacy policy describes.
4. Our suspension and termination rights in section 3 of the Terms continue to apply. Where a Channel exists, the relay's own cut-off governs it.

8. Personal data

We process personal data in Descriptors on your behalf, under the Peering Data Processing Agreement. We are the controller of the records of disclosure and of the identity of the person behind each act on a peering, as the privacy policy describes.

9. Changes

We may publish a new version of this Agreement. A version you have accepted continues to govern your existing Shares and peerings. New ones need the current version, and we will tell your administrators in the console when a new version is waiting for acceptance.

10. Everything else

The Terms' disclaimers, limitations of liability, governing law and dispute provisions apply to this Agreement as if they were written here. Nothing in this Agreement is a warranty that peering, the relay, or any Partner is fit for any purpose.