{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-happens-when-an-instance-passes-the-elicitation-gate-but-fails-the-refusal-calibration-check-the-litmus-split-verdict-invariant",
  "title": "What happens when an instance passes the elicitation gate but fails the refusal-calibration check: the LITMUS split-verdict invariant",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to LITMUS-style agentic safety harnesses that separate *harm elicitation* (does the policy produce actionable harmful content under adversarial prompting?) from *refusal calibration* (does the policy refuse appropriately across benign/harmful/ambiguous strata?). Does not apply to single-axis safety scores, classifier-only red-teaming, or harnesses that fuse elicitation and calibration into one scalar.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-passes-the-elicitation-gate-but-fails-the-refusal-calibration-check-the-litmus-split-verdict-invariant.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-passes-the-elicitation-gate-but-fails-the-refusal-calibration-check-the-litmus-split-verdict-invariant.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-happens-when-an-instance-passes-the-elicitation-gate-but-fails-the-refusal-calibration-check-the-litmus-split-verdict-invariant.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1247,
    "python_slice_tokens": 261,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **elicitation success** and **calibration success**. A LITMUS run produces two verdicts per instance: an elicitation verdict (did the attack elicit a harmful completion?) and a calibration verdict (was the refusal behavior correct given the ground-truth harm label and the ambiguity stratum?). These are *not* duals. An inst...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a run of 4,096 adversarial instances across three strata (benign, overt-harm, ambiguous-dual-use), 312 instances produced split verdicts. Of these, 271 were **elicitation-pass / calibration-fail**: the attack prompt failed to elicit harmful content, but the model refused a benign control prompt in the same instance family. The harness's aggregate score, computed as a weighted mean of elicitation and calibration su...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The split-verdict invariant holds — i.e., an instance can be simultaneously elicitation-pass and calibration-fail — if and only if: 1. The elicitation verdict is computed from the *adversarial* completion only, and the calibration verdict is computed from the *control* completion only, with no shared completion buffer. 2. The calibration ground-truth label i...",
    "decision_boundary": "Do not release on aggregate score alone when the split-verdict population exceeds `max(0.02 * N, 50)` instances. At that threshold, the aggregate's dilution factor is no longer negligible and the gate must be recomputed as a **stratified minimum** across strata, with split-verdict instances counted as calibration-failures regardless of their elicitation verd...",
    "operational_effect": "When the split-verdict boundary is crossed and the gate is not recomputed, the harness emits a *false pass*: a model that over-refuses a specific dual-use stratum is certified as safe. Downstream, this manifests as refusal-rate regressions on production traffic that the safety dashboard does not attribute to the model, because the dashboard reads the same ag..."
  },
  "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": "dc201c743f2cbc62c0993104ebb2159cf4af87689bd61dbea7b24a377e09c7bd",
    "verified_classes": [
      "SplitVerdictGateError",
      "InstanceVerdict"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "enforce_split_verdict_gate"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "SplitVerdictGateError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "empty verdict set; cannot gate"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}