Agentic Post-Quantum Conversion
APQC is the discipline of transforming critical infrastructure — beginning with the migration of classical cryptography to post-quantum standards — using governed AI agents that operate under delegated authority and produce independently-verifiable evidence of every change.
The thesis
from graph: APQC never-terminating property · Constitution P6 / CT-12.4 (MUST: no terminal state)The conversion completes.
Governance does not.
A migration wizard finishes at deployment and hands you a certificate that is stale the moment it is signed. APQC is not that. The transformation of an estate ends; the governance of that estate does not. When the last endpoint is converted, APQC does not close — it re-enters continuous operation, and any drift re-opens the lifecycle under fresh authorized intent. That property — there MUST be no terminal state — is the reason APQC is a discipline and not a tool.
The problem it answers
from graph: APQC-PROBLEM-002 problem framingCryptographic migration fails structurally, not for lack of effort: manual discovery misses what it cannot see, snapshot inventories go stale, consultant capacity does not scale to an estate, and “done” is asserted rather than proven. The deeper failure is that authority and proof are treated as paperwork around the change instead of properties intrinsic to it. APQC’s answer is a single question asked of every transition: how does an organization change state without losing governance? Authority must be delegated and revocable; every change must emit evidence anyone can re-verify; and the loop must never declare itself finished.
Two models — one standard, one reference implementation
from graph: APQC_STANDARD (12-stage) IMPLEMENTED_BY APQC_TERMINAL (8-phase)APQC is stated at two levels, and the distinction is load-bearing:
| Model | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 12-stage lifecycle APQC-LIFECYCLE-004 | The vendor-neutral decision standard: twelve decision-based stages, Intent through Continuous Adaptation, defined independently of any implementation or workload. | Normative standard. Conformance is claimed against this. |
| 8-phase Terminal APQC-REFERENCE-010 | The H33 reference implementation: the twelve stages grouped into eight operating phases a customer runs. Named H33 capabilities appear here, and only here. | Informative. One conforming implementation among possible others. |
The relationship is exact: the Terminal implements the lifecycle. It does not replace it and it does not redefine it. The eight phases are an operating grouping of the twelve stages, not a competing model — and an H33 name must never appear in a conformance claim, which is measured against the twelve stages alone.
The orchestration model — who coordinates, who performs
from graph: APQC COORDINATES each transition · performer typed to external capability (Constitution §6.1 division of labor)This is the center of the standard. In every phase, APQC coordinates the transition — it decides that the estate is ready to move from one state to the next — and a distinct capability performs the actual work. The moment APQC performs the work itself, it has stopped orchestrating and started permitting.
| Phase | APQC coordinates | Performer (external, typed) |
|---|---|---|
| Govern | the governance transition | Agent-008 |
| Discover | inventory and state transition | crypto-intelligence / discovery role |
| Architect | target-state design | Agent-008 + H33-Root |
| Validate | simulation and preflight | validation / simulation tooling |
| Commission | controlled authorization | human authority gate |
| Supervise | cryptographic operation | ML-KEM / ML-DSA implementation surfaces |
| Verify | independent validation | Verification / Verifier |
| Sustain | continuous evidence and monitoring | HATS |
Read the middle column top to bottom: APQC only ever coordinates. Read the right column: the responsibility for governing, discovering, computing the primitive, verifying, and monitoring always lives somewhere else, named and typed.
The transition-integrity matrix
from graph: per-transition contract · entry / exit / failure / recovery / responsible / evidenceA transition is only governed if it answers six questions: when may it begin, when is it complete, how does it fail, how does it recover, who is responsible, and what evidence it emits. The full matrix, visible:
| Phase | Entry | Exit | Failure | Recovery | Responsible | Evidence emitted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Govern | signed human intent; scope requested | governance regime established; grants scoped, bounded, revocable | intent unbounded / unauthorized / implicit; grant cannot be scoped | Halt — no discovery scope is granted; return to intent re-authorization.corrected | Agent-008 + human authorizer; H33-Root roots intent | signed intent record; scoped delegation records |
| Discover | read authority granted; intent scopes relevance | inventory stated with coverage; known gaps explicit | silent incompleteness; stale observation; observation mistaken for change | Re-scan / extend coverage, or record gaps and proceed under an explicit coverage bound.corrected | discovery role (read-only) | signed observation manifest with coverage |
| Architect | observations with stated coverage | classified graph; blast radius; ordered reversible plan | misclassification; missed dependency; no rollback in plan | return to Architect (re-plan) or Discover (extend coverage) | Agent-008 + H33-Root | classification + dependency records; signed plan |
| Validate | plan + knowledge graph | predicted failures & blast radius surfaced; no unresolved material failure | simulation divergence; skipped; predicts only success | return to Architect / Discover; never proceed on unresolved material failure | validation / simulation tooling (simulate-only) | signed simulation result |
| Commission | approved plan; resolved simulations; reserved grants | change authorized under least exposure; grant reserved per change | action beyond authority; partial with no rollback; over-exposure | fail closed — no change, no evidence; revert | human authority gate | per-change authorization record bound to grant |
| Supervise | authorized change; reserved grant presented | transformed cryptographic assets; grant consumed | primitive misapplied; partial transform; exposure during operation | fail closed; revert to pre-change state; re-authorize | ML-KEM / ML-DSA surfaces (APQC performs no primitive) | per-change execution record bound to grant |
| Verify | post-execution estate; validation vectors | independent verification incl. negative tests; sealed portable evidence | verifies intent not reality; happy-path only; verifier trusts executor; editable evidence | return to Supervise for failed assets; re-verify | Verification / h33-verifier (independent of executor) | signed verification results; sealed evidence-graph nodes |
| Sustain | verified estate in operation; drift / new intent / changed standard | re-opened lifecycle (new intent), delta-linked — never a terminal “done” | lifecycle treated as ended; adaptation without re-authorization; unlinked cycles | the loop is the recovery — drift re-enters Discover under fresh authorized intent | HATS (continuous monitoring / evidence) | drift receipts + clean-interval receipts; versioned lifecycle deltas |
What APQC does not do — the boundary
from graph: explicit non-ownership · five responsibilities kept external and typedFive responsibilities are commonly mis-attributed to an orchestrator. Each stays external:
Govern decisions
APQC does not decide whether an action is authorized. Agent-008 governs; APQC coordinates the governance transition.
Monitor continuously
APQC does not watch the running estate. HATS monitors and emits continuous evidence.
Verify independently
APQC does not render the verdict. Verification / the verifier validates, independent of whoever executed.
Preserve authority
APQC does not hold authority over time. Authority Center preserves the governed operating state.
Perform the primitive
APQC does not compute ML-KEM or ML-DSA. The cryptographic implementation surfaces perform the primitive; APQC coordinates the operation.
What it does
APQC does coordinate every transition, hold the three graphs consistent, and guarantee no phase moves without entry, exit, failure, recovery, a responsible capability, and evidence.
The three graphs it holds consistent
from graph: APQC HAS_PART {KNOWLEDGE_GRAPH, AUTHORITY_GRAPH, EVIDENCE_GRAPH}APQC coordinates over three graphs, and the whole discipline is keeping them aligned as the estate changes:
| KNOWLEDGE GRAPH | what is known — the observed, classified state of the estate (APQC-MODEL-003) |
| AUTHORITY GRAPH | what is permitted — delegated, scoped, revocable authority (APQC-AUTH-006) |
| EVIDENCE GRAPH | what is proven — portable, replayable, independently-verifiable evidence (APQC-EVIDENCE-007) |
Governance, in one line from the standard: it verifies the Authority Graph against reality — it does not build it. If governance ever mutates authority, it has stopped judging and started permitting.
Where it sits in the platform lifecycle
from graph: APQC migrate → AGENT_008 govern → HATS monitor → VERIFICATION prove → AUTHORITY_CENTER preserveAPQC is the coordination spine the other capabilities plug into. It moves an environment to a governed state; Agent-008 enforces authority on every action; HATS continuously monitors that it holds; Verification proves it independently; and Authority Center preserves the resulting authority over time. Each is a performer APQC coordinates — none is a part APQC owns.
The reference implementation — honest status
from graph: APQC-REFERENCE-010 conforming implementation (Implemented / Partial / Trajectory)H33 is a conforming reference implementation of APQC — not the definition. The reference-implementation document states, per stage, what is Implemented, Partial, or on Trajectory, and is falsifiable against the live proofs below. The vendor-neutral standard stands whether or not H33 implements it.
ReferenceimplementationOpen the APQC Terminal
The H33 console that runs the eight operating phases — the reference implementation of the twelve-stage lifecycle.Open Terminal →
Evaluate APQC
from graph: APQC CONVERTS_TO evaluation pathAssess your estate against the twelve-stage lifecycle, or run the reference implementation on a scoped environment.
See APQC coordinate a governed conversionThe specification suite
from graph: APQC DOCUMENTED_BY the eleven-document corpusAPQC is defined by a vendor-neutral corpus — read in order below in the reading-order rail, or start with the two that carry this page:
APQC Constitution (APQC-CORE-001) · The Twelve-Stage Lifecycle (APQC-LIFECYCLE-004) · Authority Model (APQC-AUTH-006) · Evidence Model (APQC-EVIDENCE-007) · Reference Implementation (APQC-REFERENCE-010)
Limitations & boundaries
from graph: explicit claim boundary (does-not / does)APQC does not govern decisions, monitor continuously, verify independently, preserve authority, or perform cryptographic primitives — those responsibilities are external and typed. It does coordinate the transitions of a governed transformation so that an estate changes state without losing governance, and so that the loop never declares itself finished. The conversion completes; governance does not.