# Principal Chain

> The chain of on-whose-behalf an action runs: user to agent to sub-agent, every action resolving back to a human principal.

Category: governance

A principal chain answers one question for every action: who is this ultimately being done for? It links the human principal to the agent, and the agent to any sub-agents it spawns.

## Why it matters
When agents spawn agents, accountability evaporates fast. If you cannot trace an action back to a human principal, you cannot enforce permissions, attribute responsibility, or revoke access cleanly. The chain keeps a human at the root of everything that happens.

## In practice
Each action records its principal and the delegation path that produced it. A sub-agent inherits a narrowed slice of its parent's authority, never more. You can ask, for any side effect, which human it was ultimately acting for.

## Where it shows up in my work
This is core to governable-ai.com. Delegated machine action only stays safe when every action resolves to a principal with bounded, inheritable authority.

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Source: https://ryanhunter.io/lexicon/principal-chain
Part of the Agent Infrastructure Lexicon by Ryan Hunter. https://ryanhunter.io/lexicon