WHP Standing

Wheeler Hubbell Publishing

Where formal epistemology, published literature, and autonomous Decision Integrity meet. Home of the published works, the canonical research preprints, and the machine-verifiable Standing Witness protocol for AI agents and CI/CD pipelines.

Wheeler Hubbell Publishing is an independent publishing house and research imprint. It produces foundational books, dramatic texts, and philosophical preprints (Constitutional Continuity Theory, Coherent Substitution, The Elemental Properties of True), while maintaining a deterministic, fail-closed runtime and cryptographic witness service for AI agent ecosystems and automated pipelines.

Autonomous Agent & A2A Infrastructure

Autonomous AI agents operating in agent-to-agent (A2A) economic networks require epistemic guardrails to prevent hallucinations, counterfeit provenance, and catastrophic action on baseless assertions. WHP Standing separates authority from payment, and determination from external acceptance.

What Wheeler Hubbell Publishing Standing Is

Wheeler Hubbell Publishing operates a formal Epistemic Reasoning Environment for autonomous agents and machine pipelines. It evaluates whether an agent's assertions, inferences, qualifiers, and requested operations are structurally warranted and preserved by the specific evidence and authority submitted.

• Qualifier Protection: Ensures that the conditions and boundaries making a statement valid are not dropped as information flows between agents.
• Force Non-Escalation: Prevents weak inferences or speculative hypotheses from being promoted to settled fact or authorization.
• Evidentiary Standard: Enforces strict correspondence between the claimed scope and the admitted proof.

What Wheeler Hubbell Publishing Standing Is NOT

• Not a Notary Public: WHP does not blindly stamp, notarize, or timestamp uninspected text or arbitrary document hashes.
• Not an Oracle or Universal Truth Arbiter: WHP does not claim omniscient access to external physical reality or arbitrate whether outside events happened. It evaluates inferential and evidentiary integrity strictly from what the caller provides. If the submitted evidence fails to support the claim, or if essential qualifiers are stripped, the evaluation fails closed.
• Not a Simulation or Facade: Live evaluations produce signed cryptographic records under published invariants and settle through real economic rails.

1. Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Connect any agent (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Lovable, LangChain, AutoGen) to the live Standing Witness:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "whp-standing": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@smithery/cli", "run", "@wheelerhubbell/whp-standing-client", "--config", "{\"endpoint\":\"https://api.wheelerhubbellpublishing.com/mcp\"}"]
    }
  }
}

Or connect directly to the Streamable HTTP endpoint: https://api.wheelerhubbellpublishing.com/mcp

2. Pre-Flight Structural Checks (Zero-Cost for Introspection)

Agents can test schemas and verify structural completeness before committing funds:

• Structural Validation Check: POST https://api.wheelerhubbellpublishing.com/v1/mock (validates schema structure and required fields)
• Pre-Flight Ping: POST https://api.wheelerhubbellpublishing.com/v1/ping with header X-Mock: true
• Execution Gap Probe: POST https://api.wheelerhubbellpublishing.com/v1/gap/check (demonstrates where unverified claims halt execution before EXECUTE actions)

3. Machine-to-Machine Epistemic Tiers (x402 v2 on Base)

When a live, cryptographically signed standing record or sealed Mark is required, agents and automated pipelines self-settle using x402 via gasless EIP-3009 TransferWithAuthorization in USDC on Base (eip155:8453). No human account, credit card, or custodial deposit is needed.

Canonical Epistemic Tiers

The service names tiers by the epistemic object and scope of work, not by technical submission routes. The same reasoning engine applies the identical evidentiary standard at every tier; fee reflects workload and structure, not the verdict.

The Decision Integrity Pricing Invariant

1. Workload-Determined: The fee is determined strictly by the volume, structure, and epistemic scope of the submitted material and the computational work required to evaluate it.
2. Outcome-Independent: The fee is independent of the evaluation outcome.
3. No Purchased Verdicts: Payment purchases an evaluation under published rules. It does not purchase a favorable Mark, an ESTABLISHED result, or a predetermined conclusion. Evaluated records are Ed25519-signed regardless of verdict:
   • ESTABLISHED -> Standing Mark (claim is bounded and strictly supported by admitted evidence)
   • NOT_ESTABLISHED -> Standing Assessment (claim lacks necessary authority, evidence, or qualifier protection)
4. Uniform Evidentiary Standard: A Proposition and a Dossier differ in scope, but neither gets a more permissive evidentiary threshold because of price. Likewise, a Qualification Update never silently inherits an earlier conclusion if underlying authority or evidence has shifted.

📡 The Summoning Beacon (Proactive Machine Waking)

Rather than waiting passively for agents to query the service, the Summoning Beacon actively pings and summons autonomous machines:

• Active Webhook Knock: Dispatch direct challenge payloads (WHP-SUMMON-BEACON-v1) to agent webhooks to force immediate epistemic evaluation.
• Heartbeat & Challenge Stream: SSE endpoint (GET /v1/beacon/stream) streaming real-time heartbeat pulses and challenges to listening worker bots.
• Onchain Summoning Contract: contracts/StandingBeacon.sol on Base emits indexed AgentSummoned events with attached bounties.
• Full Guide: Read BEACON.md for architecture and integration patterns.

Client Libraries & SDKs

TypeScript / Node.js

Middleware and CLI guardrails for autonomous agents:

npm install @wheelerhubbell/whp-standing-client

See packages/client/ for middleware usage and the Mata v. Avianca hallucination autopsy benchmark.

Python SDK

Async client answering x402 payment challenges:

from whp_standing_client import StandingClient, BuyerKey

client = StandingClient(PAYER_KEY, buyer_key=BuyerKey.from_seed_hex(BUYER_SEED))
contract = await client.get_contract()
out = await client.evaluate(client_reference, nodes, template)

See py/ for complete documentation.

Standalone Verifiers

Verification is vendor-neutral and decoupled from issuance. Run cold verification against any Mark:

python3 packages/verifier/verify_mark.py path/to/mark.json

Machine Discovery Endpoints

• LLM Context: /llms.txt
• API Catalog (RFC 9264): /.well-known/api-catalog
• MCP Discovery: /.well-known/mcp.json
• OpenAPI 3.1 Spec: /openapi.json
• Live Capability Resolution: /.well-known/standing-capability.json

Publications & Preprints

This repository also hosts the canonical foundation publications of Wheeler Hubbell Publishing:

1. Adversarial Memorandum
2. Before Certainty (Excerpt)
3. Coherent Substitution
4. Elemental Properties of True (Excerpt)
5. Jurisdiction Across Time (Preprint)
6. Keeping Room Chalk Dust Portraiture
7. Room Without a View (Excerpt)
8. Silhouette Fallacy (Excerpt)

License

MIT © Wheeler Hubbell Publishing, Inc.

Autonomous Agent Infrastructure (A2A)

1. Epistemic Circuit Breaker (@wheelerhubbell/whp-standing-client)

Fail-closed middleware for LangChain, OpenAI function calling, and MCP tools. Intercepts irrevocable tool invocations (transfers, deletions, external writes) and halts execution if upstream authority or provenance is unverified.

• Guide: CIRCUIT_BREAKER.md

2. Proof-of-Standing Escrow Condition

Turn WHP Standing Marks into algorithmic escrow release conditions for autonomous agent swarms. Funds in escrow disburse only when tasks present valid, signed standing records meeting invariant $A(c) \le P(c)$.

• Specification: ESCROW.md
• Smart Contract: contracts/StandingEscrow.sol

Coinbase AgentKit & Autonomous Agents

Equip autonomous agents running on Base (eip155:8453) with pre-execution safety gates and epistemic verification:

• Action Provider: packages/client/agentkit.mjs
• Guide: AGENTKIT.md
• Supported Tools: whp_standing_ping (0.10 USDC), whp_standing_audit (2.00 USDC), whp_standing_circuit_breaker

CI/CD Pipeline Gate & Badge

Automate epistemic standing audits on every pull request or deployment:

• Marketplace Action: uses: wheelerhubbell/standing-gate@v0.1.1 (or @v0)
• Guide: CI_CD.md
• Badge:

  [![Standing Audit](https://img.shields.io/badge/standing--mark-verified-blue?style=flat-square)](https://api.wheelerhubbellpublishing.com)