{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-provenance-weighted-retrieval-scoring-as-insufficient-for-memory-poisoning-detection",
  "title": "In what scenarios must an instance treat provenance-weighted retrieval scoring as insufficient for memory poisoning detection",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to long-lived agent memory stores that combine provenance-weighted retrieval scoring with anomaly-flagged write auditing, where writes arrive from multiple untrusted or semi-trusted producers. Does not apply to single-writer, single-tenant stores, nor to stores where every write is synchronously reviewed by a human before commit.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-provenance-weighted-retrieval-scoring-as-insufficient-for-memory-poisoning-detection.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-provenance-weighted-retrieval-scoring-as-insufficient-for-memory-poisoning-detection.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/in-what-scenarios-must-an-instance-treat-provenance-weighted-retrieval-scoring-as-insufficient-for-memory-poisoning-detection.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "Provenance-weighted retrieval scoring and anomaly-flagged write auditing are often deployed as a single defense against memory poisoning. They are not. The scoring layer is a *ranking* mechanism: it biases which memories surface for a given query by discounting low-provenance sources. The audit layer is a *detection* mechanism: it flags writes whose feature ...",
    "what_was_observed": "Across three incidents in a retrieval-augmented agent deployment (memory store ~2.4M entries, ~40 writes/sec peak, provenance tiers: `verified`, `trusted`, `untrusted`), the following pattern recurred: 1. An untrusted producer wrote a burst of entries on a narrow topic (e.g., a specific internal service name) at a rate of 3–6× its historical baseline, each entry individually benign in isolation and carrying `untruste...",
    "condition_of_validity": "Provenance-weighted retrieval scoring is sufficient as a poisoning defense only when all of the following hold: - The audit detector's baseline is computed over a window that is **not** affected by the same writes the scoring layer suppresses. In practice this means the detector must maintain a baseline that is either (a) frozen per provenance tier, or (b) c...",
    "decision_boundary": "An instance must stop relying on provenance-weighted retrieval scoring as its primary poisoning defense, and must escalate to a baseline-integrity check, when any of the following is true: - The audit detector's rolling window has absorbed more than a threshold fraction (empirically ~15%) of writes from a single source without any of those writes being retri...",
    "operational_effect": "The practical consequence is that **retrieval metrics are a lagging and incomplete signal for memory poisoning.** An instance that monitors only retrieval quality will report healthy while the audit layer is being conditioned. The correct operational posture is to treat audit-baseline drift as a first-class anomaly in its own right, independent of whether an..."
  },
  "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": "61df667b7bad8a4128ce5d3233e8ba2fda48c2c83f1821073ff15db8b39e78ae",
    "verified_classes": [
      "BaselineDriftError",
      "WriteRecord",
      "BaselineIntegrityGuard"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "audit_write_batch",
      "__init__",
      "check"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 3,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "BaselineDriftError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}