arXiv AI

A Contract-Centered Architecture for Scalable and Manageable Agentic Runtimes

The paper proposes a contract‑centered architecture for agentic runtimes, defining four shared responsibility objects—Skill, Harness, Scaffold, and an external data substrate—to manage capabilities, runtime, control boundaries, and data governance in enterprise AI deployments. It introduces a falsifiable hypothesis (P1) about cost‑aware capability‑capacity separability and outlines six measurable design conditions, proposing a cluster‑period randomized crossover experiment to test the hypothesis. The work presents a contract‑bounded runtime architecture, a source‑preserving data substrate, and a measurement protocol, though no implementation or empirical results are reported.

arXiv AI
Sep 11

Beyond Training: A Feasibility Taxonomy for Inference-Time AI Governance

The paper "Beyond Training: A Feasibility Taxonomy for Inference-Time AI Governance" presents a taxonomy of twenty inference‑time mechanisms for monitoring, verification, and enforcement, each evaluated on a four‑point readiness scale using evidence from four vendors. It applies this taxonomy to a two‑dimensional adversary model and maps the mechanisms to four governance scenarios, finding that most mechanisms are commercially available but only adequate against cooperative or low‑to‑medium‑capability users, not high‑capability state‑level deployers. The study also links inference‑stage controls to hardware‑stage mechanisms through a substitution principle and reports a second‑rater reliability of 0.74. whyItMatters":"The work identifies the current gaps and readiness of inference‑time governance tools, highlighting that existing mechanisms are insufficient against powerful adversaries and thus informing future regulatory and technical development."

By Samar Ansari
arXiv AI
Sep 24

From Agent Output to Authorized Transition

The paper introduces the Agile‑V Assurance Spine, a cross‑domain transition contract designed to manage the assurance of outputs from agentic engineering systems across software, firmware, and PCB domains. It specifies that evidence is only accepted when it demonstrates required properties through an authoritative source profile, is tightly bound to the exact artifact and policy baseline, stays current with declared dependencies, and meets risk‑appropriate independence and authority. Gate decisions are recorded as receipts, approvals and exceptions are scope‑ and time‑bounded, and authorization is rechecked at the effect boundary before any merge, deployment, flashing, release, or fabrication step.

By Christopher Koch
arXiv AI
Jul 22

Phionyx: A Deterministic AI Runtime Architecture with Structured State Management and Pre-Response Governance

arXiv:2607. 18246v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We present Phionyx, a deterministic AI runtime architecture derived from the broader Echoism interaction framework that introduces a governance-first approach to AI engineering: treating large language model (LLM) outputs as noisy sensor measurements rather than direct decisions.

By Ali Toygar Abak
arXiv AI
Sep 15

AcquireBound: Runtime Authorization for Resources Acquired by AI Agents

AcquireBound is a runtime authorization framework that ensures AI agents can safely acquire and activate resources such as compute, credentials, and services. It quarantines acquired outputs, resolves their capabilities through authenticated evidence, and activates them only after verifying a manifest, provenance, and relational constraints. The system demonstrates strong safety properties, passing extensive benign and unsafe trace tests across multiple resource classes.

By Genliang Zhu
arXiv AI
Sep 18

When AI Agents Commit: Cognitive Serializability Across Data, Evidence, Policy, and Authority

The paper introduces the concept of Cognitive Serializability for autonomous AI agents, ensuring that mutations derived from dynamic inputs—such as database reads, evidence, policy, beliefs, and delegated authority—are committed in a serial, logically consistent order. It presents a framework called Trusted Cognitive Transaction (TCT) that combines immutable executable definitions, sealed envelopes, guard-first commits, and receipt-driven reconciliation to enforce serializability and prevent anomalies. Experimental results show that the prototype implementation incurs minimal overhead while eliminating injected anomalies.

By Jun He, Deying Yu