Research paper 04
From Receipt to Non-Authority Trace: Evidence Transit Without Claim Promotion
Modern agentic workflows increasingly move evidence through receipts: a packet is submitted, a run is recorded, a hash is stored, a terminal state is observed, and a downstream system acknowledges intake. Receipts are valuable because they make transit inspectable. They are also risky because they can be mistaken for acceptance, approval, or claim promotion. This paper presents a receipt-to-non-authority trace pattern for AI workflow systems. The pattern records evidence transit while preserving a strict boundary: receipt terminality is not evidence acceptance, and evidence acceptance is not publication approval. The local source case comes from Switchboard-to-Spinoffs evidence transit, where a field-evidence bridge can record that an evidence packet landed while the receiving portfolio still holds the packet behind role, source, reviewer, artifact, separation, and freshness gates. The paper contributes a state model for receipts in authority-sensitive systems: produced, transmitted, received, held, accepted, rejected, superseded, stale, and promoted. Only some of these states can support stronger claims, and none should be inferred from terminal receipt alone. The goal is to keep evidence mobile without letting transport objects become unauthorized decisions.
- Paper
- 04
- Authors
- A.G. Mauro and C.A. Harris
- Date
- 2026-07-19
- Collection
- Standing Framework Research
Abstract
Modern agentic workflows increasingly move evidence through receipts: a packet is submitted, a run is recorded, a hash is stored, a terminal state is observed, and a downstream system acknowledges intake. Receipts are valuable because they make transit inspectable. They are also risky because they can be mistaken for acceptance, approval, or claim promotion. This paper presents a receipt-to-non-authority trace pattern for AI workflow systems. The pattern records evidence transit while preserving a strict boundary: receipt terminality is not evidence acceptance, and evidence acceptance is not publication approval. The local source case comes from Switchboard-to-Spinoffs evidence transit, where a field-evidence bridge can record that an evidence packet landed while the receiving portfolio still holds the packet behind role, source, reviewer, artifact, separation, and freshness gates. The paper contributes a state model for receipts in authority-sensitive systems: produced, transmitted, received, held, accepted, rejected, superseded, stale, and promoted. Only some of these states can support stronger claims, and none should be inferred from terminal receipt alone. The goal is to keep evidence mobile without letting transport objects become unauthorized decisions.
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