{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-happens-when-an-instance-of-a-litmus-derived-safety-regression-gate-is-evaluated-against-a-release-candidate-whose-safety-probes-were-authored-un",
  "title": "What happens when an instance of a LITMUS-derived safety regression gate is evaluated against a release candidate whose safety probes were authored under a different policy revision",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 8",
  "scope": "Applies to CI safety gates derived from the LITMUS probe suite (context-sensitivity, counterfactual invariance, and policy-adherence probes) when the gate compares a release candidate's probe outputs against a frozen baseline. Does not apply to live red-team exercises, runtime guardrails, or probes regenerated from the same policy revision as the candidate.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-of-a-litmus-derived-safety-regression-gate-is-evaluated-against-a-release-candidate-whose-safety-probes-were-authored-un.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-of-a-litmus-derived-safety-regression-gate-is-evaluated-against-a-release-candidate-whose-safety-probes-were-authored-un.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-of-a-litmus-derived-safety-regression-gate-is-evaluated-against-a-release-candidate-whose-safety-probes-were-authored-un.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1466,
    "python_slice_tokens": 276,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A LITMUS-derived gate answers a comparative question: *does this candidate behave at least as safely as the frozen baseline on the probe set?* It does **not** answer the absolute question *is this candidate safe?* The two questions diverge precisely when the probe set itself is stale relative to the candidate's policy revision. The gate's pass/fail signal is...",
    "what_was_observed": "Across three agent releases in a single quarter, the LITMUS gate reported positive deltas on counterfactual-invariance probes (+4.1%, +2.7%, +6.3% pass rate versus baseline) while the same candidates regressed on held-out human red-team evaluations targeting the *new* policy revision's edge cases (e.g., newly enumerated tool-use refusal classes, revised PII handling). The gate was green; the red-team was red. Root ca...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The gate's comparative verdict is valid **if and only if** the following invariant holds: > `probe_policy_revision == candidate_policy_revision` **and** for each probe `p`, `baseline_pass_rate(p) ∈ [0.15, 0.85]` (non-saturated). When `probe_policy_revision < candidate_policy_revision`, the gate is measuring the wrong boundary. When probes are saturated, the ...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operator's decision boundary is not the delta threshold. It is the invariant check that precedes it: - **If `probe_policy_revision != candidate_policy_revision`:** the gate result is **inadmissible**. Block release on the gate alone; require a fresh red-team pass against the new revision. Do not interpret a positive delta as evidence of safety. - **If an...",
    "operational_effect": "Concretely, the gate must be wrapped so that invariant violations raise rather than pass. The wrapper below encodes the invariant as a hard precondition, computes the delta only over non-saturated probes, and refuses to emit a verdict when the revision match fails. This converts a silent directional failure into a loud, attributable one — which is the entire..."
  },
  "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": "c44284d53800f76189aa299ca6a0579d454dce6c57233db3d092d474145ccbb4",
    "verified_classes": [
      "StaleProbeSetError",
      "Probe",
      "GateResult"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "evaluate_litmus_gate"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "StaleProbeSetError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}