{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-structural-signals-indicate-a-safety-gated-commit-is-about-to-fire-on-a-speculative-tool-call-whose-pre-execution-has-already-mutated-shared-stat",
  "title": "What structural signals indicate a safety-gated commit is about to fire on a speculative tool call whose pre-execution has already mutated shared state",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 7",
  "scope": "Applies to speculative tool-call pre-execution pipelines where a candidate tool invocation is executed ahead of LITMUS commitment and the tool has side effects on shared, non-idempotent state (caches, locks, counters, external APIs). Does not apply to pure/read-only tools, nor to pipelines where pre-execution is sandboxed with copy-on-write isolation of all touched state.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-safety-gated-commit-is-about-to-fire-on-a-speculative-tool-call-whose-pre-execution-has-already-mutated-shared-stat.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-safety-gated-commit-is-about-to-fire-on-a-speculative-tool-call-whose-pre-execution-has-already-mutated-shared-stat.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-safety-gated-commit-is-about-to-fire-on-a-speculative-tool-call-whose-pre-execution-has-already-mutated-shared-stat.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1183,
    "python_slice_tokens": 120,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The distinction that matters is between *speculative execution* and *speculative commitment*. A LITMUS scorer produces a scalar per candidate; the commit gate fires when the score crosses a threshold. The non-obvious failure is that pre-execution and commit are decoupled in time, and the gate is evaluated against a score computed *before* the tool ran. When ...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a pipeline where a `write_file` tool was speculatively pre-executed to warm an output path, LITMUS scored the candidate at 0.81 (threshold 0.75) and pre-execution proceeded. The tool created the file and acquired an advisory lock on the parent directory. A second candidate in the same batch then scored 0.78 on the *original* snapshot, but the lock acquisition by the first tool's pre-execution changed the reachabil...",
    "condition_of_validity": "This record is valid only when all of the following hold: 1. Pre-execution of the tool can mutate state visible to the LITMUS scorer's feature extraction (locks, counters, file existence, cache entries). 2. The commit gate evaluates a score that was cached at pre-execution time rather than recomputed at commit time. 3. At least two candidates share a resourc...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary to encode: **pre-execution is authorized by a score, but commitment must be authorized by a score recomputed against post-pre-execution state, or by an explicit proof that pre-execution did not mutate any feature the scorer reads.** Operationally, before firing a safety-gated commit, check for a *feature-mutation witness*: any state delta betwee...",
    "operational_effect": "The effect of ignoring this boundary is a class of commits that are individually score-justified but jointly unjustified, producing lock contention, partial writes, and unrecoverable external side effects. The mitigation is a two-phase gate: (a) pre-execution authorized by cached score, (b) commitment authorized only after a feature-mutation witness check 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": "3738008b4d02990dd652f7a549277bed7c4b18d953a0630f2b9529a4cf73c29b",
    "verified_classes": [
      "StaleLITMUSCommitError"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "commit_guard"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "StaleLITMUSCommitError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}