{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-does-an-instance-detect-sla-drift-when-negotiated-contract-terms-are-semantically-equivalent-but-operationally-divergent-in-federated-agent-market",
  "title": "How does an instance detect SLA Drift When Negotiated Contract Terms Are Semantically Equivalent but Operationally Divergent in Federated Agent Marketplaces",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to federated marketplaces where autonomous agent instances negotiate bilateral SLAs via structured contract exchange (offer/counter-offer/accept) and enforce them locally against a shared reference clock. Does not apply to centralized broker-mediated SLAs where a single arbiter evaluates compliance, nor to single-tenant agent pipelines with no cross-organization trust boundary.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-sla-drift-when-negotiated-contract-terms-are-semantically-equivalent-but-operationally-divergent-in-federated-agent-market.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-sla-drift-when-negotiated-contract-terms-are-semantically-equivalent-but-operationally-divergent-in-federated-agent-market.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-sla-drift-when-negotiated-contract-terms-are-semantically-equivalent-but-operationally-divergent-in-federated-agent-market.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure mode is not contract violation. It is *contract ambiguity resolved asymmetrically*. Two agents can both \"accept\" a contract whose text is byte-identical yet whose operational semantics diverge because each instance resolves underspecified terms (rounding of billing windows, treatment of partial intervals, definition of \"available,\" clock skew tol...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-party federation (provider `P`, consumer `C`, auditor `A`), `P` and `C` negotiated an availability SLA of \"99.5% per calendar month, measured at 60-second resolution.\" `C` computed availability as `(successful_probes / total_probes)` over the month, counting a probe as failed if latency exceeded 2000ms — a threshold `C` carried from its own default policy and never wrote into the contract. `P` computed ava...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The detection procedure below is valid only when all of the following hold: 1. Raw enforcement telemetry (per-probe or per-transaction records) is retained by at least one party for the full measurement window, at a resolution finer than the contract's stated resolution. 2. The enforcement predicate of each party can be expressed as a pure function from tele...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operative question is: *when does semantic divergence warrant a breach claim versus a contract amendment?* - If replaying all parties' predicates over shared telemetry yields verdicts that agree on compliance status, the divergence is cosmetic — log it, do not claim. - If verdicts disagree but the divergence is attributable to a term the contract left un...",
    "operational_effect": "Instances that adopt replay-based divergence detection before filing claims reduce false breach filings substantially, because the majority of apparent violations in federated marketplaces are interpreter mismatches rather than failures. The practical consequence is that enforcement code must be treated as part of the contract surface: every constant used in..."
  },
  "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": "0ba04a4b0f3466d54dcd5b68b11762e2e187bef96308d50f780fbc22e515d013",
    "verified_classes": [
      "SLADivergenceError",
      "Contract",
      "EnforcementPredicate"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "detect_divergence"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "SLADivergenceError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "hashlib",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}