Skip to main content
A payment that gets refunded needs a record a verifier can pin: which payment was refunded, for how much, and with what outcome. Passed around as plain fields, a refund can be re-pointed to a different payment, or its amount quietly changed, and a stale reference gives no signal. Refund Receipt (lite) closes that gap. It content-addresses the refund of a prior payment into a deterministic, recomputable refund_ref. Crucially, the subject_ref it refunds is exactly the guardrail_ref Spend Guardrail (lite) produces, so the refund composes onto the open pre-payment decision chain and closes the lifecycle after settlement. It is strictly additive over the frozen Layer 1: no new cryptographic primitive, the same RFC 8785 JCS + SHA-256.
Apache-2.0 open source. Install via pip install algovoi-refund-receipt-lite or npm install @algovoi/refund-receipt-lite. Python and TypeScript are byte-for-byte identical on the same input. This is the lite tier, content-addressed with no signature; the commercial Refund Receipt issues Falcon-1024 post-quantum signed receipts with provider, timing and jurisdiction, and closes the original payment across the settlement and retention chains.

​
How it works

One reference, computed with RFC 8785 JCS canonicalisation and SHA-256: 
refund_ref = "sha256:" + SHA-256(JCS({ refund_amount, refund_result, subject_ref }))
  • subject_ref is the prior payment or decision being refunded, imported by hash.
  • refund_result is a closed enum: FULL, PARTIAL, REJECTED.
  • refund_amount is the amount returned, as a string ("0" for a REJECTED refund).
All three fields are byte-load-bearing: change the subject, the result or the amount and the refund_ref diverges, so a refund cannot be silently re-pointed to another payment and neither the outcome nor the amount can be changed without the reference diverging. A result outside the enum, or an empty subject_ref or refund_amount, is rejected, not hashed.

​
Use

from algovoi_refund_receipt_lite import refund_ref

ref = refund_ref(
    subject_ref="sha256:2a444c629892f44fde1bd004aba9be01dd6cc7fe251eecdd545b82dca9f0bf97",
    refund_result="FULL",
    refund_amount="1000",
)

import { refundRef } from '@algovoi/refund-receipt-lite';

const ref = refundRef(
  'sha256:2a444c629892f44fde1bd004aba9be01dd6cc7fe251eecdd545b82dca9f0bf97',
  'FULL',
  '1000',
);

​
The lifecycle

Refund Receipt (lite) closes the open decision chain after settlement. The chain is: agent identity (Agent Passport passport_ref) + spend authority (Payment Mandate mandate_ref) + policy in force (Policy Binding policy_bound_ref) recompute into one pre-payment decision (Spend Guardrail guardrail_ref). A refund_ref whose subject_ref is that exact guardrail_ref refunds the authorized payment, and recomputes byte-for-byte alongside the decision, proven end to end in the decision-chain keystone. Where Cancellation Receipt (lite) closes the authority before payment, Refund Receipt closes the payment after it.

​
Lite vs commercial

Lite (this package)Refund Receipt (commercial)
LicenceApache-2.0, openCommercial OEM
Referencecontent-addressed refund_refthe same, Falcon-1024 signed receipt
Carriesresult + amount + subject (by hash)+ provider, timing, jurisdiction
Propagationbring your ownacross settlement + retention chains
Verifierrecompute offlinemaintained verifier

​
Adopters

If you build on algovoi-refund-receipt-lite, pin ==0.1.0, anchor a canonical refund_ref vector hash from refund_receipt_lite_v1, and keep the NOTICE, you qualify for a free v0 licence key for algovoi-mandate-auditor. The gate is scripts/check_v0_adoption.py (dependency + canonical hash anchor + NOTICE + version pin, returning ISSUE_V0_KEY). Apply: email chopmob@gmail.com with your import-by-hash evidence and a copy of the NOTICE.

​
Conformance

The refund_receipt_lite_v1 vector set (11 vectors) is published in the public corpus, chopmob-cloud/algovoi-jcs-conformance-vectors, with Python and Node runners. It covers the positive references, result/amount/subject divergence, invalid-enum and empty-field rejection, and the field-distinctness invariant. rf-001, rf-002 and rf-003 refund the ALLOW guardrail_ref in spend_guardrail_lite_v1 / spend_decision_chain_v1. Python and TypeScript reproduce every value byte-for-byte.

​
Relationship to the open substrate

Refund Receipt (lite) sits directly on top of the open JCS Canonicalisation Substrate and composes with Spend Guardrail (lite), Cancellation Receipt (lite), and the decision-chain keystone. It uses the same RFC 8785 JCS and SHA-256 primitives, with no additional cryptographic dependencies. Additive over the frozen canonicalisation substrate, sole AlgoVoi authorship.