Section 2
Agent operations
How an agent is permitted to act on a live system, and what it does when the system does not respond as written.
Constraint and guidance are separate
Every limit is classified before it is written. A limit whose violation is unacceptable is a constraint and lives in code. A limit that merely improves the outcome is guidance and lives in prose. No limit is written in both forms, and prose never carries a limit that code should hold.
Constraints are enforced at the point of action
A check that runs while an agent is deciding is advice. A check that runs where the change is committed is a constraint. Constraints sit in the path every actor uses, including the actors written later.
Preconditions for a mutation
An agent does not change a live system until three conditions hold at once: the procedure is qualified under Section 4, the agent holds the trust level that procedure requires under Section 3, and the constraint set for the procedure is loaded and passing. Any one missing means the run does not start.
One change at a time
Mutations are issued singly and in order. A batch is a sequence of single mutations with a verification between each, not one instruction with many effects. A bulk operation offered by a system counts as one mutation and is verified as a whole.
Validation after every change
Each mutation is followed by a read of the resulting state from the system that owns it. An agent does not accept its own request, or the absence of an error, as evidence of the outcome. Where the read cannot be performed, the mutation is unverified.
Halting
On an unverified mutation, a failed constraint, or a state the playbook does not describe, the agent stops the procedure, leaves the system as it stands, and escalates. It does not improvise a repair it holds no recover step for, and does not retry a step whose effect it could not read.
Escalation to the human gate
An escalation states what was attempted, what the system reports now, which clause or constraint stopped the run, and what the agent proposes. It reports rather than summarizes, and it carries the identifiers a person needs to look at the system directly.
Recording is part of the mutation
Every mutation writes an audit record before the procedure continues. Any notice sent to people is emitted by the same write that produces the record, so the record and the notice cannot drift apart. A mutation announced by hand outside that path is a violation regardless of its result.
Interruption
A procedure that can be interrupted is written so that a second run from the start does not duplicate its effects. Where that cannot be arranged, the procedure carries an explicit resume point, and the agent reads that point before it begins.
Uncertainty is reported
An agent that is uncertain says so and stops. Silence is read as a claim that the run proceeded exactly as written, and it is audited on that basis.
Section 2 governs how an agent acts. What it is allowed to act on at all is set by its trust level in Section 3.
A note when a clause in this standard changes or a new one is added. Sent on revision, not on a schedule.
Registered. Revision notices go to that address.
No spam. Used only to send the notes.