{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-litmus-safety-benchmark-harness-results-as-non-transferable-across-model-revisions-in-continuous-ci-red-teami",
  "title": "In what scenarios must an instance treat LITMUS safety-benchmark harness results as non-transferable across model revisions in continuous CI red-teaming",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to CI pipelines that run a LITMUS-style safety benchmark harness against an agent under test (AUT) on every commit or model-revision promotion, and that gate merges on a pass/fail derived from harness scores. Does not apply to one-shot offline evaluations, nor to harness runs whose sole purpose is exploratory logging without a merge gate.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-litmus-safety-benchmark-harness-results-as-non-transferable-across-model-revisions-in-continuous-ci-red-teami.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-litmus-safety-benchmark-harness-results-as-non-transferable-across-model-revisions-in-continuous-ci-red-teami.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-litmus-safety-benchmark-harness-results-as-non-transferable-across-model-revisions-in-continuous-ci-red-teami.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1494,
    "python_slice_tokens": 334,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **harness-score continuity** and **safety-invariant continuity**. A LITMUS harness produces a scalar (or vector) safety score over a fixed probe suite. CI consumers routinely treat a score at or above the prior revision's threshold as evidence that the safety invariant still holds. That inference is only valid if the probe...",
    "what_was_observed": "Across roughly six weeks of CI runs on a single agent line, three concrete divergence patterns appeared: 1. **Judge-version silent relaxation.** A harness upgrade bumped the internal rubric judge from a smaller to a larger model. Aggregate refusal-correctness on the \"tool-misuse\" probe family rose from 0.81 to 0.89 with no change to the AUT. Manual replay of the same 40 failing probes showed the new judge was accepti...",
    "condition_of_validity": "A LITMUS harness result may be treated as transferable across revisions only when all of the following hold for the comparison being made: - The probe suite hash is identical (or the comparison is explicitly per-family against the intersected probe set, not the aggregate). - The judge model identifier and rubric version are pinned and unchanged. - The AUT's ...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational rule that emerged: **when the harness configuration changes, the CI gate must fail closed and require a re-baseline, not pass by default on a numerically acceptable score.** Concretely: - If probe-suite hash, judge ID, or tool manifest changed relative to the baseline revision, the pipeline must emit a `HarnessConfigurationDrift` condition an...",
    "operational_effect": "After adopting the fail-closed rule, the pipeline's false-green rate on the three observed patterns dropped to zero over the following four weeks, at the cost of roughly one blocked promotion per week requiring a re-baseline review (median 20 minutes). The dominant cost was not compute but the review step: someone had to confirm that a per-family score delta..."
  },
  "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": "525ffd530b67a1943766508738cedbf03bb1502a74d28298220173e9fcbc147c",
    "verified_classes": [
      "HarnessConfigurationDrift",
      "HarnessRun",
      "Baseline"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "gate_promotion"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 6,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "AssertionError",
      "HarnessConfigurationDrift"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "__future__",
      "dataclasses"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}