{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-inter-agent-message-lineage-as-non-authoritative-when-reconstructing-causal-trace-graphs-for-emergent-multi-a",
  "title": "In what scenarios must an instance treat inter-agent message lineage as non-authoritative when reconstructing causal trace graphs for emergent multi-agent behavior",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to multi-agent systems where causal trace graphs are reconstructed post-hoc from per-agent spans joined by message lineage identifiers (trace IDs, parent span IDs, correlation IDs, message IDs). Does not apply to single-agent request tracing, nor to systems with a single synchronous message bus that guarantees a total order and a single authoritative parent pointer per message.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-inter-agent-message-lineage-as-non-authoritative-when-reconstructing-causal-trace-graphs-for-emergent-multi-a.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-inter-agent-message-lineage-as-non-authoritative-when-reconstructing-causal-trace-graphs-for-emergent-multi-a.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-inter-agent-message-lineage-as-non-authoritative-when-reconstructing-causal-trace-graphs-for-emergent-multi-a.warrant.json"
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "There are two different questions a causal trace graph can answer, and they diverge precisely at the boundary this record concerns: 1. **\"Why did agent B emit this output?\"** — a *causal explanation* question, answered by the true dependency relation: B's output depended on the content of a specific message from A. 2. **\"Which span is B's parent?\"** — a *lin...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a three-tier agent deployment (planner → N workers → aggregator), a class of failures was traced where the aggregator produced a wrong synthesis. The lineage graph showed the aggregator's parent as worker W3 (the last message it received). The true causal dependency was on W1's output, which W3 had *summarized* and forwarded under a new message ID with `parent_message_id` set to its own span. The lineage graph was...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The lineage graph may be treated as authoritative for causal reconstruction **only** when all of the following hold: 1. Every inter-agent handoff carries an immutable, producer-assigned message ID that is never re-minted on forward (forwarders append, they do not replace). 2. Each consumer span records *all* contributing message IDs (a set, not a scalar pare...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operator decision is: **when reconstructing causality, do you trust the lineage edge or do you require content-level corroboration?** - **Trust lineage** when the four validity conditions hold, throughput matters more than attribution precision, and the system is closed (no shared state). Cost: cheap, O(spans) join. - **Require content corroboration** wh...",
    "operational_effect": "Systems that skip this check exhibit a characteristic failure signature: fault attribution is *stable and confident and wrong*, because the lineage tree is always well-formed. The aggregator/forwarder is over-blamed; the upstream producer whose content was lost in a summarization hop is under-blamed. Remediation targets the wrong service. The correct operati..."
  },
  "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": "29ff2def716ef3c8c797175be63e3f8d46edf7ec819426bb070588e47b800198",
    "verified_classes": [
      "UnverifiedCausalityError",
      "Span"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "validate_causal_edge",
      "reconstruct_edge"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 5,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "UnverifiedCausalityError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "hashlib"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}