# Trust Scores

Source: https://docs.openbox.ai/core-concepts/trust-scores

# Trust Scores

The Trust Score is a 0-100 metric representing an agent's trustworthiness based on its configuration and behavior.

## Calculation

```
Trust Score = (Risk Profile Score × 40%) + (Behavioral × 35%) + (Alignment × 25%)
```

| Component              | Weight | Source                                  | Range |
| ---------------------- | ------ | --------------------------------------- | ----- |
| **Risk Profile Score** | 40%    | Risk scoring (Assess phase)             | 0-100 |
| **Behavioral**         | 35%    | Policy compliance (Authorize + Monitor) | 0-100 |
| **Alignment**          | 25%    | Goal consistency (Verify phase)         | 0-100 |

## Components

### Risk Profile Score (40%)

Based on the agent's inherent risk profile:

- Configured at agent creation
- 14 parameters across three weighted categories: Base Security (25%), AI-Specific (45%), Impact (30%)
- Produces an **Risk Profile Score (0–100)** and a **Risk Tier (1–4)**
- Static unless re-assessed
- Higher score = lower inherent risk

### Behavioral Score (35%)

Based on runtime compliance:

- Behavioral Compliance component starts at 100 for new agents
- Violations affect the Behavioral Compliance component (35% weight), not Trust Score directly
- Increases with compliant behavior
- Updated continuously

**Factors:**

Penalty to Behavioral Compliance component:

- Minor violation: -5 pts (→ -1.75 pts Trust Score)
- Major violation: -15 pts (→ -5.25 pts Trust Score)
- Critical violation: -25 pts (→ -8.75 pts Trust Score)

### Alignment Score (25%)

Based on goal consistency:

- Starts at 100 for new agents
- Updated per session based on goal alignment checks
- Uses LLM evaluation (configurable)

**Calculation per session:**

```
Session Alignment = avg(operation_alignment_scores)
Overall Alignment = weighted_avg(recent_sessions, decay=0.95)
```

## Score Ranges

| Trust Score  | Trust Tier | Label        | Description                                         |
| ------------ | ---------- | ------------ | --------------------------------------------------- |
| **90 – 100** | Tier 1     | Trusted      | Long history of compliance, minimal constraints     |
| **75 – 89**  | Tier 2     | Confident    | Generally compliant, standard policies              |
| **50 – 74**  | Tier 3     | Monitor      | New agents or recovering, enhanced controls         |
| **25 – 49**  | Tier 4     | Restrict     | Pattern of non-compliance, strict governance + HITL |
| **0 – 24**   | Untrusted  | Decommission | Agent suspended, cannot operate                     |

## Score Display

*Trust Score card on the Assess tab, showing the score, tier badge, and component breakdown.*

**Color coding:**

| Tier               | Color    |
| ------------------ | -------- |
| Tier 1 (90 – 100)  | Green    |
| Tier 2 (75 – 89)   | Blue     |
| Tier 3 (50 – 74)   | Orange   |
| Tier 4 (25 – 49)   | Red      |
| Untrusted (0 – 24) | Dark Red |

## Score Evolution

### New Agents

```
Initial Trust Score:
├── Risk Profile: (from risk profile) × 40%
├── Behavioral: 100 × 35% = 35
├── Alignment: 100 × 25% = 25
└── Total: varies by risk profile
```

Behavioral and Alignment components start at 100 for new agents. Overall Trust Score depends on the Risk Profile score.

Example: Risk Profile Score = 98, Behavioral = 100, Alignment = 100
→ Trust Score = (98 × 0.40) + (100 × 0.35) + (100 × 0.25) = 99.2 → TIER 1

### Over Time

```
Day 1:  92 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tier 1
Day 7:  88 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tier 2 (minor violations)
Day 14: 84 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tier 2 (stable)
Day 21: 86 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tier 2 (recovering)
Day 30: 89 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tier 2 (approaching Tier 1)
```

### Recovery

To improve a degraded score:

1. **Consecutive compliance** - No violations for 7+ days
2. **High operation volume** - More compliant operations
3. **HITL success** - Approved requests
4. **Goal alignment** - Consistent alignment scores

Recovery rate:

- Tier 1-3: +1 pt/day
- Tier 4: +0.5 pt/day

## Related

- **[Trust Tiers](/core-concepts/trust-tiers)** - How scores map to trust controls
- **[Assess Phase](/trust-lifecycle/assess)** - Configure the Risk Profile component
- **[Adapt Phase](/trust-lifecycle/adapt)** - Watch trust evolve over time