| Internet-Draft | ITT-L | May 2026 |
| Tsoi | Expires 16 November 2026 | [Page] |
This document defines Iron Triangle Trace for Longevity (ITT-L), a domain-specific Application Payload Format carried within the PACR (Physical and Causal Auditable Record) envelope. Each ITT-L record binds four measurement facets — gene, mechanism, drug/metabolite, and epigenetic — into a single independently-citable asset with causal predecessor chain (Π) integrity provided by the PACR transport layer. ITT-L is NOT a standalone protocol; it is a payload format that leverages PACR for physical proof (Λ, Landauer cost) and causal ordering (Π chain), and AgentCard for service identity.¶
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.¶
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."¶
This Internet-Draft will expire on 16 November 2026.¶
Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document.¶
Longevity research produces data across multiple measurement layers: genomic variants, proteomic drug targets, metabolic pathway participants, and epigenetic clock markers. These data are typically stored in heterogeneous databases with no common citation format, making cross-layer validation and third-party reproducibility difficult.¶
ITT-L addresses this by defining a standardized JSON payload format that binds all four measurement layers per gene into a single record. Each ITT-L record is carried inside a PACR envelope, which provides:¶
ITT-L is complementary to [I-D.draft-aevum-agentcard], which declares agent identity and capabilities, and [I-D.draft-aevum-causal-intervention-record], which defines the PACR transport envelope.¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
An ITT-L payload is a JSON object carried in the body(P) field of a PACR Application Payload. The JSON Schema is defined at https://eon.aevum.network/itt-l-schema-v1.json.¶
The following fields MUST be present in every ITT-L payload:¶
record_type: MUST be the string
"iron_triangle_trace_l".¶
schema_version: MUST be "1.0".¶
gene_facet: object with gene_symbol (string) and
causal_score (number).¶
mechanism_facet: object with KEGG/Reactome pathway data
and a mechanism_partial boolean (honest marker).¶
drug_metabolite_facet: object with DrugBank entries,
AlphaFold pLDDT, and metabolites.¶
coupling_edges: object with three sub-objects
(gene_protein, protein_epi, epi_gene), each containing value (number
or null), status (enum: unmeasured, estimated, measured,
blocked_external_data), and source (string or null).¶
h_itt_gene: number ∈ [0,1], computed as
facet_completeness × facet_consistency × (1 + edges_measured/3) / 2.
This formula is frozen in v1.0.¶
The following fields MAY be present:¶
epigenetic_facet: object with EPI-score, Horvath CpG
count, and epigenetic modifier status.¶
discovery_class: enum "novel" | "drug_ready", indicating
the DoD track that produced this record.¶
auto_discovered: boolean indicating whether the record
was generated by the ITT-grower daemon rather than human curation.¶
The three coupling edges map to the iron triangle framework described in [I-D.veneter]: genome, proteome, and epigenome form three vertices; the edges measure information flow fidelity between them.¶
In ITT-L v1.0, all coupling edges default to status "unmeasured" — this is an honest marker, not a data gap. Edges transition to "measured" when the corresponding measurement operator produces a value. The edge_factor component of H_ITT_gene increases from 0.5 (all unmeasured) toward 1.0 (all measured), providing a built-in incentive for edge measurement without penalizing records that legitimately lack measurement data.¶
ITT-L is designed as an engineering protocol that also supports scientific falsifiability. Four falsifiable predictions are defined in the companion Falsifiability Manifest (EON-ITT-L-FALSIFIABILITY-MANIFEST.md):¶
ITT-L does not introduce new security considerations beyond those already described in the PACR transport specification [I-D.draft-aevum-causal-intervention-record]. The following considerations apply:¶
This document requests the registration of the following media type:¶