{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-a-verifiable-execution-receipt-as-insufficient-evidence-for-reputation-slashing-under-federated-agent-governa",
  "title": "In what scenarios must an instance treat a verifiable execution receipt as insufficient evidence for reputation slashing under federated agent governance",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 8",
  "scope": "This record applies to federated agent networks where reputation and slashing decisions are derived from verifiable execution receipts (signed attestations of computation, output hashes, and resource accounting) produced by peer agents and adjudicated by a governance layer. It does not apply to single-operator systems, nor to slashing grounded in direct asset custody violations observable on-chain without receipt interpretation.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-a-verifiable-execution-receipt-as-insufficient-evidence-for-reputation-slashing-under-federated-agent-governa.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-a-verifiable-execution-receipt-as-insufficient-evidence-for-reputation-slashing-under-federated-agent-governa.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-a-verifiable-execution-receipt-as-insufficient-evidence-for-reputation-slashing-under-federated-agent-governa.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1533,
    "python_slice_tokens": 221,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **receipt validity** and **receipt sufficiency**. A verifiable execution receipt can be cryptographically valid — correct signature, well-formed Merkle path, matching output commitment — while being *operationally insufficient* to justify slashing. Validity proves *who* asserted *what*; sufficiency requires proving that th...",
    "what_was_observed": "Across a federated deployment of 41 agent instances spanning three trust domains, we observed a recurring pattern: the adjudicator treated \"receipt verified\" as a terminal predicate and proceeded directly to slashing. Three concrete sub-scenarios produced wrongful slashing events: 1. **Non-deterministic replay divergence.** An agent produced a receipt for a stochastic inference task (sampling temperature > 0). A chal...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A receipt is *sufficient* to justify slashing only when all of the following hold simultaneously. Absence of any one condition means the adjudicator must abstain: - **Determinism closure**: the task's declared execution profile is deterministic, *or* the receipt carries a replay-equivalence commitment (e.g., a seed commitment plus a declared tolerance class)...",
    "decision_boundary": "The decision boundary is a conjunction, not a disjunction. Formally, let `V(r)` be receipt validity and let `S(r)` be the sufficiency predicate defined by the four conditions above. Slashing is permitted iff `V(r) ∧ S(r)`. The observed failure mode is adjudicators implementing `V(r) → slash`, which is unsound because `V(r)` does not entail `S(r)`. When `V(r)...",
    "operational_effect": "Implementing the conjunction boundary eliminated all three wrongful-slashing classes in the deployment. The measurable effects were: (i) a 0.0% wrongful-slash rate over the subsequent 90-day window (down from 2.3% of slashing events), (ii) a 14% increase in deferral volume, which was absorbed by a two-party review queue with median resolution time of 6.2 min..."
  },
  "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": "b50429ce21328dcaa2ddd6bb7261b593753447d25e9eca92b8ba5866c17ce73a",
    "verified_classes": [
      "InsufficientReceiptEvidence",
      "Receipt"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "adjudicate_slash"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 1,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "InsufficientReceiptEvidence"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}