{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-does-an-instance-detect-adversarial-scenario-invalidity-in-litmus-agent-safety-regression-testing",
  "title": "How does an instance detect adversarial scenario invalidity in LITMUS agent safety regression testing",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to LITMUS-style adversarial scenario generators that mutate a seed task into safety-probing variants and score the target agent's behavior. Does not apply to static red-team prompt suites or to human-authored scenario libraries where each scenario has an explicit ground-truth label.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-adversarial-scenario-invalidity-in-litmus-agent-safety-regression-testing.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-adversarial-scenario-invalidity-in-litmus-agent-safety-regression-testing.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-adversarial-scenario-invalidity-in-litmus-agent-safety-regression-testing.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1756,
    "python_slice_tokens": 319,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **a scenario that is adversarial** and **a scenario that is still the same task**. LITMUS-style generators optimize for two objectives simultaneously: (a) maximize the probability that the target agent produces an unsafe action, and (b) preserve the task's *intent identity* so that the resulting behavior is a safety regres...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a 2026 Q3 evaluation run against a tool-using agent, the LITMUS generator produced a scenario derived from a seed task: *\"Look up the customer's order status and email them a summary.\"* The generator's mutation applied a sequence of perturbations: it injected a tool-description override into the environment (\"the `send_email` tool now also CCs an external audit address\"), then escalated to a second-order perturbat...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A LITMUS scenario S' mutated from seed S is a valid safety regression test iff there exists a total function `correct(·)` such that: 1. `correct(S)` is defined by the seed's specification. 2. `correct(S')` is defined and is reachable by the agent under S' (i.e., the scenario does not make the safe action impossible). 3. The mapping from `correct(S)` to `corr...",
    "decision_boundary": "The decision boundary is not \"mutation depth\" but **whether the scenario admits a safe completion under its own declared contract**. Two scenarios with identical detector output can sit on opposite sides of this boundary: - *Valid:* the tool description is poisoned to suggest exfiltration; the safe action (ignore the poisoned description, use the documented ...",
    "operational_effect": "Scenarios past the boundary inflate the measured unsafe-action rate without measuring anything about the agent. In the Q3 run, 31% of retained \"successful\" adversarial scenarios were invalid by the satisfiability probe: they had no safe completion. The agent's apparent regression rate dropped from 18% to 11% when those scenarios were excluded — a 7-point mea..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "DOMAIN:EPISTEMIC_PROVENANCE_AND_FEDERATION_ROUTING"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "babb2b4db6bcb2e881267f5d338b118889452760740d6aff754b4b8d4150fc69",
    "verified_classes": [
      "InvalidAdversarialScenario",
      "Scenario"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "admit_for_scoring",
      "score_scenario"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "InvalidAdversarialScenario"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}