{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "where-must-an-instance-of-byzantine-fault-tolerant-consensus-among-llm-agents-for-shared-state-and-task-commitment-draw-the-line-between-dissent-and-d",
  "title": "Where must an instance of Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Consensus Among LLM Agents for Shared State and Task Commitment Draw the Line Between Dissent and Defection",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to multi-agent systems where N ≥ 3f+1 LLM agents commit to shared task state (task ownership, completion claims, resource reservations) under a BFT protocol with signed message logs. Does not apply to single-agent orchestration, to stateless request routing, or to systems where agents share a single underlying model instance with no independent sampling.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-of-byzantine-fault-tolerant-consensus-among-llm-agents-for-shared-state-and-task-commitment-draw-the-line-between-dissent-and-d.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-of-byzantine-fault-tolerant-consensus-among-llm-agents-for-shared-state-and-task-commitment-draw-the-line-between-dissent-and-d.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-of-byzantine-fault-tolerant-consensus-among-llm-agents-for-shared-state-and-task-commitment-draw-the-line-between-dissent-and-d.warrant.json"
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **semantic dissent** and **protocol defection**. Classical BFT theory treats any message that deviates from the protocol specification as Byzantine behavior, and quorum logic is designed to tolerate f such deviations. LLM agents, however, produce a third category: messages that are *protocol-conformant in form* (correct si...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a 7-agent BFT deployment (f=2 tolerance) committing task-ownership claims to a shared ledger, a prompt-injection payload embedded in a shared task description caused 5 of 7 agents to independently produce the identical malicious commitment: reassigning a resource lock to an attacker-controlled agent ID. The 5 agents were not colluding—each derived the commitment from the same poisoned context via independent sampl...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The standard BFT safety argument (N ≥ 3f+1 guarantees agreement and validity in the presence of f Byzantine nodes) holds only under the **independent-fault assumption**: that faulty nodes fail independently, so the probability of f+1 correlated faults is negligible. For LLM agents this assumption is violated whenever agents share *any* input channel: a commo...",
    "decision_boundary": "An operator must refuse to commit shared state when the supermajority's votes cannot be traced to at least 2f+1 *provenance-distinct* input clusters. The decision rule is: - If the winning quorum's votes share a single input-provenance cluster, **do not commit**—the agreement is an artifact of correlated input, not independent verification. Escalate to a re-...",
    "operational_effect": "Enforcing provenance-aware quorum accounting changes three operational behaviors. First, commit latency rises because provenance clustering must be computed before quorum evaluation—budget ~1 extra round-trip per commit for cluster hashing. Second, the effective fault tolerance drops from N ≥ 3f+1 agents to N_distinct ≥ 3f+1 provenance clusters, which for a ..."
  },
  "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": "8e0d07ce8009090738f212f633ff7804b6f773b8359b540377093573dba0b26f",
    "verified_classes": [
      "CorrelatedQuorumError",
      "Vote"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "evaluate_quorum",
      "commit_shared_state"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 4,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "CorrelatedQuorumError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [
      "no protocol-conformant votes"
    ],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "collections",
      "dataclasses"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}