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arXiv AI By Yang Wang

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

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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.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

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