{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-treat-a-write-audit-diff-as-evidence-of-poisoning-rather-than-as-a-legitimate-consolidation-event",
  "title": "Under what conditions must an instance treat a write-audit diff as evidence of poisoning rather than as a legitimate consolidation event",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 12",
  "scope": "Applies to agent long-term memory stores that perform periodic consolidation (summarization, deduplication, embedding re-projection) and that maintain a write-audit log capable of producing per-record diffs between snapshots. Does not apply to append-only stores with no consolidation pass, nor to stores where the audit log records only write timestamps without content hashes.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-treat-a-write-audit-diff-as-evidence-of-poisoning-rather-than-as-a-legitimate-consolidation-event.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-treat-a-write-audit-diff-as-evidence-of-poisoning-rather-than-as-a-legitimate-consolidation-event.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/under-what-conditions-must-an-instance-treat-a-write-audit-diff-as-evidence-of-poisoning-rather-than-as-a-legitimate-consolidation-event.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1348,
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A write-audit diff answers one question: *did the bytes of this record change between snapshot N and snapshot N+k?* It does **not** answer *who caused the change or whether the change was authorized.* Consolidation passes routinely rewrite records — merging duplicates, shortening summaries, re-embedding after a model upgrade — and these rewrites produce diff...",
    "what_was_observed": "On a store with a nightly consolidation pass, an embedding re-projection job rewrote 4,200 records. The write-audit diff flagged all 4,200 as \"modified.\" A naive poisoning detector keyed on diff volume raised a critical alert and quarantined the entire namespace. The actual poisoning event that week — 3 records whose content had been replaced with instructions redirecting the agent's retrieval policy — was buried ins...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The diff-as-poisoning-evidence interpretation is valid only when all of the following hold: 1. The consolidation pass emits a manifest entry for every record it rewrites, and the manifest is written **before** the record mutation commits (write-ahead ordering). If the manifest is written after, a crash between mutation and manifest write produces a legitimat...",
    "decision_boundary": "Classify a diff as **poisoning evidence** when any of these hold: - The diff is orphaned (no manifest entry for the snapshot pair) **and** the content hash change includes a provenance field. - The diff has a manifest entry but the record fails a declared invariant after the rewrite (the manifest explains *that* a rewrite happened, not *what* it was allowed ...",
    "operational_effect": "The practical consequence is that poisoning detection must be a **two-key** operation: diff presence *and* manifest/invariant mismatch. Single-key detectors either saturate on consolidation volume (false positive) or are defeated by whitelist-pattern observation (false negative). Stores that cannot emit a write-ahead consolidation manifest cannot safely run ..."
  },
  "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": "12247cfb6deaa6436a638a2da08e5c42df71b25276fcaf8f8b4f988b350b1b28",
    "verified_classes": [
      "PoisoningEvidenceError",
      "DiffRecord"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "classify_diff",
      "audit_window"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "PoisoningEvidenceError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "hashlib"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}