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This comprehensive explanation has been generated from 10 GitHub source documents. All source documents are searchable here.
Last updated: October 7, 2025
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An entity in a validating role that launches an inquiry at a KERI witness to verify key event information and validate the authenticity of identifier state.
An inquisitor is a general term for an entity in a validating role that launches an inquiry at some KERI witness. This minimal glossary stub establishes basic terminology within the ACDC and KERI ecosystems without providing detailed implementation specifications.
The term borrows from its historical meaning: an official with judicial or investigative functions in an inquisition—an organization intended to eliminate heresy and enforce doctrinal compliance. In the ACDC context, this investigative connotation is applied to the technical role of querying and validating information from KERI witnesses.
Within the ACDC ecosystem, an inquisitor represents someone performing a validation role who initiates an inquiry directed at a KERI witness. This establishes the inquisitor as a component of the verification and validation infrastructure, though the specific mechanisms, protocols, and interaction patterns are not detailed in the available glossary material.
The term serves primarily as a vocabulary reference for understanding roles within the ACDC validation framework, establishing that entities performing validation functions may need to query witnesses as part of the verification process.
The inquisitor concept connects to the broader KERI validation infrastructure where validators and interact with to establish the authenticity and current state of (Autonomic Identifiers). However, the specific technical details of how inquisitors operate, what protocols they use, or how they integrate with other KERI components are not documented in the available source material.
Inquisitors are typically implemented as part of validation infrastructure rather than as standalone components. The inquiry process involves:
Inquisitors contribute to KERI's security model by:
Inquisitor functionality may be integrated into:
This glossary entry represents a minimal stub definition that:
The entry serves to establish vocabulary rather than provide comprehensive technical documentation, allowing developers to understand that validation processes involve inquiry-based interactions with witnesses without prescribing specific implementation approaches.
While the inquisitor definition itself is minimal, the term exists within the broader KERI validation ecosystem alongside:
The inquisitor terminology helps distinguish the specific act of launching inquiries at witnesses from the broader validation and verification functions performed in the KERI ecosystem.
The term appears in KERI/ACDC documentation as part of the standard glossary of roles and functions within the verification infrastructure. Its presence in the canonical terminology indicates that inquiry-based validation is a recognized pattern in the ecosystem, even though the glossary material does not provide detailed technical specifications for how such inquiries are conducted or processed.
As a general term, "inquisitor" provides flexibility in describing validation scenarios where entities need to query witnesses without prescribing specific implementation patterns or protocols. This allows different KERI implementations to adopt inquiry mechanisms appropriate to their architecture while maintaining consistent terminology for the role.
The inquisitor is a minimally-defined term in the KERI/ACDC glossary that designates an entity performing validation by launching inquiries at KERI witnesses. The term borrows from its historical investigative meaning to describe the technical role of querying witnesses during validation processes. The glossary material provides only this basic definition without elaborating on technical mechanisms, protocols, or implementation details, serving primarily as a vocabulary reference for understanding roles within the ACDC validation framework.