regent-httpsig

Verify and sign AI agent HTTP traffic in Python — the way OpenAI signs and Cloudflare verifies. RFC 9421 · Web Bot Auth · AAuth

OpenAI's agents cryptographically sign every HTTP request they make. Cloudflare, AWS WAF and Google verify those signatures. This library brings both sides of that handshake to Python: verify signed agents hitting your API, and sign your own agent's traffic so bot walls recognize it.

pip install regent-httpsig

Verify: know which AI agent is calling — in 5 lines

from fastapi import FastAPI
from regent_httpsig import HttpsigVerifier
from regent_httpsig.fastapi import attach, SignatureDep, VerifiedSignature

app = FastAPI()
attach(app, HttpsigVerifier())

@app.post("/v1/orders")
async def create_order(sig: VerifiedSignature | None = SignatureDep):
    if sig:
        print(sig.agent)    # "https://chatgpt.com"
        print(sig.keyid)    # RFC 7638 key thumbprint
    ...

No FastAPI? The core has no framework dependencies:

verifier = HttpsigVerifier()
sig = await verifier.verify(method, url, headers)            # VerifiedSignature | None
out = await verifier.verify_detailed(method, url, headers, body)
# VerifiedSignature | VerificationError(code="expired_jwt", …) | None

Verification is enrichment by default: no Signature header costs nothing, a bad signature yields None, and nothing ever raises on untrusted input. verify_detailed() says why with the Signature-Error code of draft-hardt-httpbis-signature-key exactly as AAuth -11 §11.3.4 assigns it (invalid_signature, invalid_input, unsupported_scheme, unsupported_algorithm, invalid_key, unknown_key, issuer_missing, issuer_mismatch, invalid_jwt, expired_jwt, revoked_jwt, clock_skew); error.headers() is the 401's header set and error.problem() its problem+json body. Use regent_httpsig.fastapi.RequiredSignatureDep when a signature must be present — the 401 carries that header, or AAuth-Requirement: requirement=agent-token when nothing was signed.

Behind a reverse proxy? The agent signed the public URL (https://api.example/…), but your ASGI server sees http://container/…. The FastAPI dependency rebuilds the signed URL from X-Forwarded-Proto + Host, so make sure your proxy forwards the scheme — nginx: proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;. If signatures mysteriously fail to verify in production, check this first.

Sign: get your agent past bot walls

from regent_httpsig import EgressSigner

signer = EgressSigner(seed=os.environ["AGENT_KEY_SEED"],
                      signature_agent="https://myagent.example")
headers = signer.sign("POST", url, {"content-type": "application/json"})
resp = httpx.post(url, json=body, headers=headers)

Generate a key and the ready-to-publish /.well-known/ files in one command:

regent-httpsig keygen --agent https://myagent.example --out ./well-known/

Publish the directory at https://myagent.example/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory and every Web Bot Auth verifier on the internet can now identify your agent.

The same key signs as an AAuth agent (-11 §11.3.3) — the token in Signature-Key, the required components covered, Content-Digest computed when there is a body:

headers = signer.sign_aauth("POST", url, {"content-type": "application/json"},
                            token=agent_token, body=raw_body)

and a server (a PS or AS calling a resource's usage or revocation endpoint, §11.3.2) signs under the jwks_uri scheme with ServerSigner(seed=…, server_id="https://ps.example", dwk="aauth-person.json") — publish .jwks() at your metadata document's jwks_uri.

What exactly is verified

Check	Status
RFC 9421 Appendix B.2.6 Ed25519 vector (byte-exact)	✅ in CI
Web Bot Auth draft -05 A.2.2 — sf-dictionary Signature-Agent covered with ;key=	✅ in CI¹
Web Bot Auth A.2.3 — legacy sf-string form (what OpenAI ships in production)	✅ in CI
Sign → verify roundtrip (fresh keys, full pipeline)	✅ in CI
AAuth -11 agent / person / auth tokens (cnf.jwk proof of possession, required components, body digest, 60 s created window, RS-51 token time, fully-specified algs, Ed25519 + ES256 possession keys)	✅ in CI
AAuth -11 server scheme (jwks_uri with id/dwk/kid, issuer_mismatch, key rotation refetch)	✅ in CI
Every -11 §11.3.4 Signature-Error code, revoked_jwt via the revocation record, RS-52 case-exact ids	✅ in CI
Signed by aauth-signing (jwt scheme, keyid-less) → verified	✅²
Tampered request / expired signature / wrong directory key rejected	✅ in CI

¹ The signature bytes printed in the draft's own A.2.2 example do not verify over the draft's own signature base (the legacy A.2.3 vector and RFC 9421 B.2.6 both do, so the defect is in the example, not the canonicalization). Ed25519 is deterministic, so our test pins the vector re-signed with the same RFC test key over the same byte-exact base — reported upstream.

² Cross-library interop with aauth-signing's jwt scheme: token layer, cnf.jwk proof of possession and canonicalization all verify. Its signers correctly omit the optional keyid parameter — which exposed an unconditional keyid read in the underlying RFC 9421 library that we now handle. One deviation reported upstream to aauth-signing: it emits the Signature byte sequence as base64url, while RFC 8941 requires standard base64. The keyid-less shape is pinned in CI.

Both dialects, one verifier

• Web Bot Auth (draft-meunier-web-bot-auth-architecture): key discovery via {Signature-Agent}/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory. Both wire forms of Signature-Agent are accepted — the current sf-dictionary and the legacy bare sf-string OpenAI actually sends.
• AAuth (draft-hardt-oauth-aauth-protocol-11): the agent carries its token in Signature-Key under the jwt scheme — an agent token (aa-agent+jwt), a person token (aa-person+jwt, opt-in via HttpsigConfig.resource_url) or an auth token (aa-auth+jwt, pinned via trusted_ps); the issuer's JWKS, discovered through {iss}/.well-known/{dwk}, verifies the token, the token's cnf.jwk verifies the request signature. Servers sign under jwks_uri (id/dwk/kid). Install with pip install 'regent-httpsig[aauth]'. 0.7.0 is the -11 cut-over — one dialect, as published: fully-specified algorithms only (RFC 9864; EdDSA is refused), the required covered components, the 60-second created window, no tolerance on exp, revoked tokens named as revoked. require_fully_specified_algs=False survives for private test rigs only. For a full-protocol AAuth implementation (both roles, all token types) see christian-posta/aauth-python-library — this library is the thin relying-party verifier that handles both dialects.

Budgets: meter a spending envelope (draft-hardt-aauth-budgets)

An agent can carry a PS-issued auth token (typ: aa-auth+jwt) with a budget claim — a spending envelope it uses offline, no per-call round trip to the control plane. The middleware does the whole resource-side checklist: verify the token against your pinned PS, atomically reserve → commit → release per request, answer with AAuth-Budget, and refuse exhausted envelopes with a 401 + AAuth-Requirement (optionally carrying your signed resource token with one consumption record — the presented token's {jti, consumed} — so one agent never learns about a sibling's spending). The cap is per token: a jti never draws on a sibling's grant; the (iss, sub, aud) key is only the per-person ledger behind records and usage:

from regent_httpsig import HttpsigConfig, HttpsigVerifier, InMemoryMeter
from regent_httpsig.fastapi import BudgetMiddleware

app.add_middleware(
    BudgetMiddleware,
    verifier=HttpsigVerifier(HttpsigConfig(
        resource_url="https://api.example",
        trusted_ps={"my-ps": "https://ps.example/jwks.json"},
    )),
    meter=InMemoryMeter(),
    price_fn=lambda request: PRICES.get(request.url.path),  # max cost, minor units
)

The only thing the library cannot do for you is pricing (price_fn) — that is your domain. First known implementation of the draft; running in production on get4agent.com.

The August 20 additions are covered too:

• insufficient-budget refusals carry required — the refused request's maximum cost — so the agent lowers its bound and retries instead of guessing.
• Revocation (-11 §11.12): make_revocation_endpoint(meter, authenticate_ps=…) takes the signed POST {"jti", "exp"}, keys the record by the caller's verified identity, answers an empty 200 always (no 404) and problem+json invalid_request / unsupported_iss. A revoked token stops spending at once, in-flight requests complete, and a later presentation is answered 401 + Signature-Error: error=revoked_jwt + AAuth-Requirement: requirement=person-token — no resource token (§11.12.5). Wire HttpsigVerifier(is_revoked=meter.is_revoked) so the verifier names it first.
• An expired auth token is answered the same way with expired_jwt (budgets editor's copy, 6 October): nothing is served or metered, and the token's final consumption record reaches its issuer through the usage endpoint, not on the challenge.
• Streaming responses run in the draft's cost-omitted mode: reserved in the header, commit when the stream ends (set request.state.budget_cost mid-stream if you learn the actual), and the agent recovers the exact cost from the next response's remaining.
• The usage endpoint (§Usage Counters) lets your PS query consumption without the agent in the loop — scope counters (sub, UTC calendar buckets) and per-key jkts totals, optionally signed:

from regent_httpsig import InMemoryMeter, ResponseSigner, make_usage_endpoint

async def authenticate_ps(request):          # the PS signs as a server, §11.3.2
    return await verifier.verify_server(request.method, str(request.url),
                                        dict(request.headers), await request.body())

handler = make_usage_endpoint(
    meter,
    authenticate_ps=authenticate_ps,
    unit="USD", decimals=6,
    signer=ResponseSigner(seed=SEED, server_id="https://api.example"),  # dwk aauth-resource.json
)

@app.post("/usage")
async def usage(request: Request):
    return await handler(request)

• validate_budget_grant(unit, decimals, budget_units) enforces the resource metadata MUSTs before you mint a resource token — the "thousandfold error" guard.

Test vectors: vectors/aauth-budgets-vectors.json — header serializations (including required and the cost-omitted streaming case), the budget object, consumption records, and a fully worked signed usage response with a fixed key, ready for cross-implementation checks.

Security model (what a naive implementation gets wrong)

The verifier fetches key directories from attacker-nameable origins — whoever signs a request chooses its Signature-Agent. regent-httpsig ships with the guard rails on:

• SSRF protection by default: https-only, every resolved IP must be public (catches 169.254.169.254, loopback, private ranges, DNS names mapping to internal services), redirects never followed, responses size-capped.
• Bounded caching: per-instance TTL cache with eviction — a keyid-spam attack can't grow memory; failures are negative-cached so a dead origin can't be used to slow you down.
• A valid signature proves key possession — not trustworthiness. VerifiedSignature.trusted reflects only your configured allow-list; deciding whether to trust a key is your policy layer's job.

Known sharp edges of the underlying ecosystem, already handled: the upstream http-message-signatures library cannot resolve RFC 9421 ;key= dictionary members (we provide the component resolver), it looks up header names case-sensitively while ASGI frameworks lowercase them (we wrap), and it forgets to declare typing_extensions (we declare it).

Configuration

from regent_httpsig import HttpsigConfig, HttpsigVerifier

verifier = HttpsigVerifier(HttpsigConfig(
    trusted_agents=frozenset({"https://chatgpt.com", "https://operator.openai.com"}),
    max_age_hours=25,              # Web Bot Auth: reject signatures created earlier than this
    signature_window_seconds=60,   # AAuth -11: the `created` window (advertise as signature_window)
    resource_url="https://api.example",                    # accept person / auth tokens for us
    trusted_ps={"https://ps.example": ""},                 # pinned issuers ("" = discover the JWKS)
    cache_ttl=600,                 # key-directory cache seconds
), is_revoked=meter.is_revoked)    # optional: name revoked tokens as revoked

Pass your app's shared client to reuse its pool: HttpsigVerifier(http_client=my_async_client).

Honest limitations

• Web Bot Auth and AAuth are IETF drafts (RFC 9421 itself is a final standard). We track the drafts; breaking draft changes land as minor releases while we're 0.x.
• Web Bot Auth is Ed25519 only — it's what the agent ecosystem ships. AAuth possession keys may be Ed25519 or P-256 (ES256); RS256 is accepted for issuer keys.
• On the AAuth path a request with a body must cover content-digest and content-type (-11 §11.3.3.1) and the digest is checked against the body you pass; the FastAPI layer reads the body for you. Web Bot Auth keeps its per-route choice.
• Not in 0.7.0: issuing person/resource tokens, missions, the 202 deferred requirement=auth-token, federated mode — the PS half of the protocol.

Related projects

cloudflare/web-bot-auth (TypeScript/Rust) · christian-posta/aauth-python-library (full AAuth protocol) · pyauth/http-message-signatures (the RFC 9421 primitive this builds on)

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Built and battle-tested in production by Regent Protocol — runtime control and identity for AI agents. Apache-2.0.