For trust service providers
Two things that only work together.
The qualified electronic signature is available exclusively to natural persons (Art. 14 para. 2bis of the Swiss Code of Obligations). An AI agent cannot provide it — not today, and not with better technology. That is not a gap in the product; it is the legal position.
From that follows a division of labour that neither side can serve alone.
What Mandact provides
- Detects form-bound actions: 49 of 123 action types require a human signature, and 4 are categorically closed to an agent.
- Stops the agent before execution and puts the action in front of a human — with a reason code, not an error message.
- Keeps the evidence chain, hash-chained and recomputable without database access.
- Carries its hash algorithm on every entry, so that a proof from 2027 can still be attributed in 2037.
What a trust service provides
- The qualified signature of the human who approved — legally equivalent to a handwritten signature.
- The qualified timestamp on the root hash of the evidence chain. From that point on, no earlier entry can be altered.
- The identity with an evidenced level of assurance, against which an approval can be attributed.
- The accreditation that makes a receipt hold up towards third parties — not only towards your own internal audit.
The docking point is built
The adapter for RFC 3161 and OASIS DSS over mTLS exists in the reference code. It transmits the hash only, never the data. It is not in operation: the connection to an accredited service is still outstanding. Without a configured provider the anchor table stays empty — a simulated timestamp would be worse than none at all.
The escalation is the handover point
When Mandact halts a form-bound action, a case arises with everything a signature needs: the specific action, its hash, the legal basis, the jurisdiction, and the person who is to decide. The trust service comes in exactly there — it needs to know nothing about agents.
Long-term validity works both ways
A timestamp only holds as long as its algorithm holds. Mandact records what each entry was formed with, and distinguishes an anchor from before an algorithm break from one after it — the second rescues nothing. Without that distinction an archive is just a log with checksums.
What is not claimed here
Mandact is not a trust service and will not become one. It does not physically prevent an action, it signs nothing in qualified form, and the timestamp today comes from its own database. These limits are recorded in KNOWN_LIMITATIONS.md and watched by a test that turns the gate red if a page claims more.
An example
An HR agent is to terminate an employment relationship in Germany.
- Mandact recognises: § 623 of the German Civil Code (BGB) rules out electronic form — including the QES.
- Answer
escalate, codeMD-404, reasonlegal_form. No mandate can waive this. - A human is presented with the case — with hash, legal basis, and jurisdiction.
- They sign. This is where the trust service comes in.
- The receipt records both: that the agent was authorised, and that a human signed.
This is not a pitch: for every form-bound action in the German-speaking region the qualified signature is legally mandatory. An agent cannot provide it. Mandact detects those actions and stops it. The signature comes from you.
That is not a selling point. That is the legal position.