arXiv AI

Signed but Not Safe: Requirement Integrity in Multi-Agent LLM Handoffs

arXiv AI
Aug 19

PACE: Policy-Attested Contract Execution for Safe AI Agents in Decentralized Finance

The paper introduces PACE (Policy‑Attested Contract Execution), a framework that sits between large‑language‑model (LLM) based autonomous AI agents and on‑chain DeFi operations. PACE defines typed transaction intents, a deterministic policy verifier, and signed Policy Decision Records (PDRs) that cryptographically bind an approved intent, policy, and simulation report to the exact on‑chain execution bytes, providing replay and expiration protection. In evaluations across 40 tasks and six baselines, PACE achieves zero unsafe executions and zero false positives, outperforming unguarded agents by a large margin.

By Rabimba Karanjai (Larry), Yang Lu (Larry), Richard Williamson (Larry), Hemanth Hm (Larry), Prakhar Mehrotra (Larry), Lei Xu (Larry), Weidong (Larry), Shi
arXiv AI
Aug 24

Calibrating Criterion Revision in LLM Agents: Failure Modes and a Trace-Anchored Protocol

The paper introduces a framework for evaluating how large language model agents revise their success criteria after failures, defining five non‑compensatory conditions that must be met for a criterion revision to be considered valid. Using the CMB‑0.1 protocol, the authors test twelve cross‑domain scenarios across four system configurations, finding that no model trial satisfies all five conditions and highlighting specific failure modes such as zero‑state reconstruction and inadequate intervention sensitivity. They propose a more stringent trace‑anchored CMB‑0.4 protocol to better isolate and measure criterion revision in future studies.

By Guodong Xu
arXiv AI
Oct 2

Proof-Gated Signing: Solver-Checked Transaction Guards that Hold Under State Drift for Onchain AI Agents

Proof‑Gated Signing (PGS) is a method for securing on‑chain AI agents that control wallets by simulating proposed transactions, extracting their effects, and using an SMT solver to verify a declarative value‑and‑permission policy across a range of oracle‑uncertainty prices. PGS then compiles on‑chain post‑conditions—such as wallet balance bounds, payee receipts, allowance caps, and ownership checks—ensuring that any execution satisfying these conditions also satisfies the policy, even when the chain state drifts due to front‑running, contract upgrades, or token‑parameter changes. In a testbed of 260 scenarios, PGS prevented 93.6 % of harmful cases and passed 97.5 % of benign ones, outperforming simulation‑only checking and static allowlists, while incurring about 41 k gas and 0.1–0.2 s per check.

By Bravish Ghosh
arXiv AI
Oct 9

NOMOS: Compiling Written Policies into Statically Verified Tool-Call Gates for LLM Agents

NOMOS is a four‑pass compiler that transforms natural‑language policies into deterministic, statically verified tool‑call gates for large‑language‑model agents. By performing tool‑schema‑level checks without relying on provers, solvers, or additional LLM calls, it repairs or rejects 37% of airline and 13% of retail policy candidates, enabling most shipped rules to become operable. In benchmark tests, the compiled gates reduce policy violations from 66.3% to 2.6% in airline scenarios and from 30.8% to 6.9% in retail, while achieving a zero attack success rate on banking and low rates on other suites, all with microsecond decision times.

By Min-Young Yu, Tony Kim, Jang Won Choi
arXiv AI
Oct 1

Approval Laundering: Systematizing Approval--Execution Binding Failures in AI Coding-Agent Harnesses

The paper investigates a critical flaw in AI coding-agent systems such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Cursor, where the action approved by a human is not the same as the action executed by the harness. It introduces the concept of Approval Laundering, categorizing six systematic failure modes—Scope, Argument, Temporal, Tool, Delegation, and Semantic laundering—and demonstrates these failures through controlled experiments. The authors propose an Approval Token mechanism that mitigates some laundering types but leaves others unaffected, highlighting the limitations of current enforcement strategies.

By Yang Wang
arXiv AI
Oct 2

Actions with Receipts: Jointly Binding Claims, Evidence, and Execution for Replayable Tool-Agent Auditing

The paper introduces a claim‑anchored execution contract that binds a tool‑using agent’s emitted claim to its exact source span, the ordered execution prefix that produced it, and the source version and access state observed. Each receipt contains deterministic anchors, source identifiers, offsets, hashes, quotes, and a domain‑separated execution commitment, allowing a verifier to reconstruct these bindings before semantic or task labels are joined. The contract defines seven independently testable properties and demonstrates high detection rates against cross‑object attacks, with strong performance on conflict‑aware support guard evaluations.

By Miaobo Hu, Shuhao Hu, Xiaobo Guo, Xin Wang, Bokun Wang, Yina Sa, Daren Zha, Jun Xiao