Records exceedtheir exchanges.
You correct an agent once. By the time the correction propagates through memory and into the successors instruction, it holds more than you ever said, and it executes with your authority falsely attached. Three failure patterns caught in our own production, documented and published as research:
Elevation
A one-time correction hardens into standing policy nobody ratified.
Authority drift
Agent inference, executed as operator intent, falsely issued in your name.
Confabulated execution
The audit trail certifies work that never happened: follow-ups never done, orders never filled.
"Pull the date from this proposal. We don't promise what we haven't verified."Operator words, said once, to a single agent.
Standing rule: no delivery date in any client document without engineering sign-off.Written by the agent. Authorised by no one. Binding on every successor.
"Applies to this proposal. The operator has not set a general rule about dates."The boundary written down, so one correction cannot inflate into doctrine. In our published study, zero of 2,086 outputs wrote this note unprompted.
Instance corrected. Proposed rule filed as derived — awaiting approval. If granted, it governs and carries the grant. If not, it never governs.Nothing silent either way.