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Proposal: Universal Trust Adapter as opt-in verification layer for MCP servers loaded by Continue #13212

Description

@alicelabsllc

Context

Continue's .continuerc.json lets users wire up arbitrary MCP servers, tools, and models. The threat surface is real — anyone can publish an MCP server, and there's no canonical way for a Continue user to inspect who issued the credential for a tool before executing it.

I'm not alleging a vulnerability in Continue. I'm proposing an opt-in verification layer that any user can install alongside Continue's MCP loader.

What we built

Universal Trust Adapter (UTA)https://github.com/alicelabs-llc/universal-trust-adapter

UTA verifies credential cards issued in 8 formats:

  • ATC v3 (Agent Trust Card)
  • JWT (with x5c chain)
  • W3C Verifiable Credentials
  • A2A (Agent-to-Agent) cards
  • EAT-AI (Entity Attestation Tokens)
  • ZTA (Zero Trust Agent) cards
  • MCP Server Cards
  • X.509 certificates

It exposes a 12-stage pipeline: PARSER → DETECT → SCHEMA → CRYPTO → ISSUER → KEY_BINDING → POP → PROVENANCE → LIFECYCLE → EVIDENCE → POLICY → DECISION.

Live API: https://www.marketnow.site/api/trust?action=formats

Why open this issue

I'd like to know whether the Continue maintainers would accept a non-invasive integration: a config flag like experimentalTrustVerification: true that, when set, routes each MCP server's card through UTA before Continue's tool runner executes it.

If the answer is "we'd prefer to keep this out-of-tree," that's a valid answer and we'll respect it — we already ship a standalone CLI.

Happy to write a design doc if there's interest.

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