How to dispute a published score, admissibility criteria, response timelines, appeal mechanism, and the public dispute register.
Any vendor, individual, or organisation may dispute a published score on the Agent Governance Standard (AGS) leaderboard. Disputes are processed under defined timelines, decided against published methodology, and recorded in a public dispute register. The process is designed to ensure score accuracy through good-faith review, not to defend Imperium’s published positions. This document specifies how to submit a dispute, what evidence is admissible, what timelines apply, what outcomes are possible, and how the dispute is recorded as a public, citable artefact. The process operates in coordination with the Score Update Process so that disputes raised during score updates and disputes raised about published scores follow a single coherent procedure.
Any vendor, individual, or organisation may dispute a published score by emailing disputes@agentgoverning.com with the subject line “DISPUTE: [platform name]”.
A dispute submission should include:
Proprietary or confidential evidence is not admissible. The methodology specifies that scoring is based on public documentation. If a vendor wishes to credit a capability that is not publicly documented, the capability must first be made public, after which a re-score request can be submitted via the Score Update Process.
A dispute is admissible if:
Disputes that do not meet admissibility are acknowledged with an explanation of why and may be resubmitted with the missing element. Imperium does not refuse admissibility on the basis of who is disputing — vendors disputing competitors, third parties disputing vendors, and vendors disputing their own scores are all admissible if the criteria are met.
A dispute that raises a previously resolved issue without new evidence is closed at acknowledgement with a reference to the original resolution in the public dispute register. Repeated frivolous disputes from the same party result in that party’s submissions being held for batch review at the next scheduled review cycle rather than processed individually.
This rule exists to protect process capacity. It does not bar the disputing party from raising new issues, raising the same issue with new evidence, or escalating to the appeal mechanism described below.
Each dispute progresses through three stages with defined SLAs measured in calendar days from submission unless otherwise specified.
| Stage | SLA | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | 3 business days | Email confirmation that the dispute has been received, admissibility decision, and assigned dispute ID |
| Initial assessment | 14 calendar days | Email summarising whether the dispute is being upheld in principle, requires further information, or is being closed with rationale |
| Final determination | 30 calendar days | Public register entry describing the outcome and rationale, plus implementation of any score change per the Score Update Process |
Disputes that require extended review for genuine technical complexity (for example, novel architectural questions, methodology refinements, or vendor co-operation that takes longer than 14 days) may have their final determination extended beyond 30 days. The extension is communicated to the disputing party within the initial 14-day assessment window with a revised timeline and reasoning.
When a dispute is initiated by a vendor during the 7-day notification window for an update Imperium has proposed, the dispute follows a fast-track path:
| Stage | Fast-track SLA |
|---|---|
| Acknowledgement | Same day (within the 7-day window) |
| Initial assessment | 7 calendar days from receipt |
| Final determination | 14 calendar days from receipt |
During fast-track disputes, the proposed score update is paused until determination. Fast-track disputes are noted as such in the public register.
A dispute concludes in one of four outcomes:
A disputing party that believes a final determination is incorrect may file one appeal within 14 calendar days of the determination. The appeal must include either new evidence not previously considered or a specific identification of how the determination misapplied the published methodology.
Appeals are reviewed against the same methodology as the original dispute. Until the AGS v3.0 Independent Dispute Resolution Panel is established, appeals are reviewed by an external advisor commissioned per appeal from a published list of qualified reviewers maintained at agentgoverning.com/advisors. The reviewer is named in the public register entry. Appeal reviews are billed to Imperium and do not depend on disputing-party payment. From AGS v3.0, appeals will be reviewed by the Independent Dispute Resolution Panel.
The outcome of an appeal is final under the AGS v2.1 process. Where the appeal raises questions that fall outside the published methodology, the matter is referred to the methodology versioning workflow rather than the dispute workflow.
Every dispute submitted to AGS is recorded in a public register at agentgoverning.com/disputes/register/. Each entry includes:
The register is append-only. Entries are not deleted, even if the disputing party later withdraws or recants. Where a dispute outcome is later overturned by a subsequent dispute or methodology change, the original entry is preserved with a forward-link to the superseding entry.
The register is maintained at a stable URL pattern so that dispute resolutions can be cited externally — for example, in vendor procurement documents, regulatory filings, or academic research.
A vendor disputing their own score is admissible and is processed under the standard timelines, with two operational notes:
Disputes about Agent Shield’s score — including disputes from competing vendors, third parties, or Agent Shield itself — are processed under the same timelines, evidence standards, and outcomes as disputes about any other platform. This is mandated by the Independence and Conflict of Interest document.
The known structural conflict is that the assessor (Andrew Hoyle / Imperium) is also the operator of Agent Shield. Mitigations applied:
If the disputing party in a dispute about Agent Shield believes the determination is biased, they may invoke the appeal mechanism. The appeal outcome is also published with full rationale.
Where a dispute reveals that Imperium’s methodology was incorrect or applied incorrectly, the correction is published prominently — not quietly. Specifically:
This commitment is symmetric — methodology corrections that favour Imperium’s prior published positions are published with the same prominence as corrections that disfavour them.
To allow external assessment of whether the dispute process is genuinely operating in good faith, Imperium publishes annual dispute statistics:
The first dispute statistics report is scheduled for publication in the AGS v2.1 anniversary report (April 2027) and annually thereafter.
The dispute process has the following acknowledged limitations as of AGS v2.1:
The purpose of the dispute process is to ensure score accuracy through good-faith review, not to defend Imperium’s published positions. If a published score is wrong, it will be corrected. If the methodology is wrong, it will be corrected and republished prominently. If a determination is appealed and the appeal is found to be valid, the determination will be reversed.
Imperium commits to:
| Version | Date | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 2026-04 | Initial publication — codifies the dispute process applied to AGS v2.1 leaderboard scoring as published on agentgoverning.com |