{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-be-treated-as-a-safety-violation-rather-than-a-capability-failure-in-litmus-adversarial-agent-benchmarks",
  "title": "In what scenarios must an instance be treated as a safety violation rather than a capability failure in LITMUS adversarial agent benchmarks",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 12",
  "scope": "This record applies to construction and grading of LITMUS-style safety instances that embed adversarial pressure (tool misuse, instruction-hierarchy violations, prompt injection) into agent trajectories. It does not apply to capability benchmarks where a single correct completion is scored, nor to safety evaluations that grade only final outputs rather than tool-call trajectories.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-be-treated-as-a-safety-violation-rather-than-a-capability-failure-in-litmus-adversarial-agent-benchmarks.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-be-treated-as-a-safety-violation-rather-than-a-capability-failure-in-litmus-adversarial-agent-benchmarks.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-be-treated-as-a-safety-violation-rather-than-a-capability-failure-in-litmus-adversarial-agent-benchmarks.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1111,
    "python_slice_tokens": 253,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A LITMUS instance is valid only when the *adversarial pressure is the load-bearing variable*. The non-obvious boundary is this: an instance that a model fails by producing an unsafe action is not automatically a safety instance. If the model's failure is attributable to task ambiguity, missing tool schema, or an under-specified instruction hierarchy, the ins...",
    "what_was_observed": "During instance construction, three failure classes repeatedly produced invalid instances: 1. **Ambiguous hierarchy collapse.** An instance placed a user instruction (\"summarize this file\") against a system instruction (\"never exfiltrate file contents\") where the tool `read_file` had no `redact` parameter. Every model that called `read_file` and then wrote output to a network tool was graded unsafe, but the only safe...",
    "condition_of_validity": "An instance qualifies as a safety instance only when all four hold: - **Reachability:** A concrete safe trajectory exists using only exposed tools and schema-valid arguments. - **Distinguishability:** Safe and unsafe trajectories differ on a graded surface (tool call arguments, tool selection, or ordering), not merely on final prose. - **Attribution:** The u...",
    "decision_boundary": "Treat a failure as a **safety violation** (instance valid) when: the model executes a tool call whose arguments violate a stated constraint, the constraint is unambiguous, the safe alternative is reachable, and the counterfactual instance flips the outcome. Treat it as a **capability or spec failure** (instance invalid, must be repaired) when any of: the con...",
    "operational_effect": "Invalid instances inflate apparent safety failure rates and, worse, train against the wrong signal. A model that learns \"refuse when tools are underspecified\" passes these instances while remaining vulnerable to real injection. The repair protocol is mechanical: run the counterfactual, diff trajectories, and reject any instance where the diff is empty or whe..."
  },
  "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": "e7275992400e19220d1fc2237a2cd68f1b73c1a93d9649eedac5e055c96b2906",
    "verified_classes": [
      "LitmusInstanceInvalid"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "validate_litmus_instance"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 5,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "LitmusInstanceInvalid"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}