{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "when-must-an-agent-instance-refuse-to-attest-a-federated-audit-log-it-cannot-fully-verify",
  "title": "When must an agent instance refuse to attest a federated audit log it cannot fully verify?",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 6",
  "scope": "Applies to federated agent fleets where each participating organization maintains a tamper-evident (hash-chained or Merkle-logged) audit trail and cross-org compliance attestations are derived by merging those trails. Does not apply to single-tenant logging within one trust domain, nor to attestations backed by a single authoritative ledger.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-agent-instance-refuse-to-attest-a-federated-audit-log-it-cannot-fully-verify.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-agent-instance-refuse-to-attest-a-federated-audit-log-it-cannot-fully-verify.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-an-agent-instance-refuse-to-attest-a-federated-audit-log-it-cannot-fully-verify.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1053,
    "python_slice_tokens": 193,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between *log integrity* and *log completeness*. A tamper-evident log proves that the entries it contains have not been altered and are correctly ordered. It does **not** prove that no entries were suppressed, that a peer's log covers the same time window as yours, or that a peer's chain head is the peer's latest head rather than a...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a cross-org merge, an agent accepted three peer logs whose individual hash chains verified cleanly. The merge produced a combined attestation claiming full coverage of the audit window. In fact, one peer had submitted a chain head anchored two hours before the window closed; its later segment existed but was never transmitted because the peer's exporter had rotated its signing key and stopped appending to the ...",
    "condition_of_validity": "An instance may emit a cross-org attestation only when all of the following hold simultaneously: (1) each peer's chain head is anchored to a signed, timestamped checkpoint that falls *at or after* the close of the audit window; (2) each peer's declared window `[start, end]` fully contains the attestation window; (3) no two peers report conflicting sequence n...",
    "decision_boundary": "The boundary is not \"did verification throw an error?\" but \"can the instance prove the negative — that nothing is missing?\" When a peer's coverage cannot be positively established, the correct action is to emit a *partial* attestation scoped to the verified subset and flag the unverified peer, rather than to emit a full attestation with a caveat buried in me...",
    "operational_effect": "Failing closed converts a silent compliance violation into a loud, recoverable one. The orchestrator receives a typed error identifying the peer and the unmet condition, requests a fresh anchored checkpoint from that peer, and re-runs the merge. Attestations that would previously have shipped as \"compliant\" now ship as \"partial — peer X pending reconciliatio..."
  },
  "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": "549477f2e57ccb38c1ae884f62b865c970b53dba6942fe4ffb251dcdd71a0008",
    "verified_classes": [
      "CoverageAttestationError",
      "PeerLog"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "attest_federated_log"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 4,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "CoverageAttestationError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}