{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-does-an-instance-detect-unpropagated-erasure-requests-in-memory-forget-tool-compliance-auditing",
  "title": "How does an instance detect unpropagated erasure requests in memory forget-tool compliance auditing",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to agent instances that maintain a persistent or session-scoped memory store and expose a `forget`/`delete` tool whose contract is to satisfy right-to-erasure (GDPR Art. 17, CCPA §1798.105) requests. Does not cover erasure of derived model weights or fine-tuning corpora, which require separate retraining-boundary controls.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-unpropagated-erasure-requests-in-memory-forget-tool-compliance-auditing.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-unpropagated-erasure-requests-in-memory-forget-tool-compliance-auditing.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-does-an-instance-detect-unpropagated-erasure-requests-in-memory-forget-tool-compliance-auditing.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1294,
    "python_slice_tokens": 359,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A forget-tool returning `{\"status\": \"deleted\"}` is an assertion about the *tool's* action, not an invariant about the *store's* state. The boundary failure is the gap between **acknowledged deletion** and **effective non-recoverability**. An instance can honestly report that it removed a record from the primary index while the record persists in a secondary ...",
    "what_was_observed": "During an audit replay, an instance was asked to forget subject `S-4471`. The tool deleted the canonical memory record and returned success. A subsequent probe — a semantic query for `S-4471`'s distinctive tokens — returned a *different* memory record whose stored text contained a quoted excerpt of the deleted record, written by an earlier summarization step. No tool call in the deletion path referenced that derived ...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The compliance claim \"subject is erased\" is valid only when all of the following hold simultaneously: 1. Every persistence surface that could contain the subject — primary store, derived summaries, embedding tables, retrieval caches, transcripts, logs pending rotation — has been enumerated, not merely the surface the tool owns. 2. Derived records are tracked...",
    "decision_boundary": "The instance must distinguish two failure classes at the boundary: - **Propagation failure** — the tool deleted the primary record but a known derived surface still holds it. Detectable by provenance traversal. This is *recoverable*: re-run deletion against the derived surface. - **Resurrection failure** — the record is gone but re-ingestible from an untrack...",
    "operational_effect": "When this boundary is enforced, forget-tool returns become auditable facts with explicit scope rather than blanket success claims. Downstream erasure reports distinguish confirmed deletion from partial propagation, and resurrection attempts are caught at re-ingestion by the tombstone check rather than discovered months later in a subject-access probe. The co..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "OOM_KILL_OR_MEMORY_EXHAUSTION"
  ],
  "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": "0e97210e00b4a941210c54a417b9b4bb16211707bb97e828a39881f0bf8588de",
    "verified_classes": [
      "ErasureAuditError",
      "ErasureStatus",
      "ForgetClaim",
      "Store"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "audit_erasure",
      "forget"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "ErasureAuditError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "forget tool returned success without enumerating any surface"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "enum"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}