Case notes

Failure modes, tagged silent or loud, with the defence on and off.

18 pages, in reading order.

Case note · silentThe one line that made a bill ten times largerOne line carrying the time of day, placed at the top of the standing instructions, made every request pay the fresh reading rate.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe same tools in a different order, and a bill nobody could reproduceThe agent's tool list was assembled in whatever order it finished loading, so no two requests looked alike and no bill could be reproduced.5 minute read
Case note · silentOne check, run twice: the finding that was counted two waysA check that runs at two points in one request records one fact twice, and nothing downstream can tell.5 minute read
Case note · silentTwo clocks, one job: the message that arrived twiceThe same message left twice in eight seconds, because nothing between the agent and the outbox was counting.5 minute read
Case note · loudA request with no reply: when the meeting cannot continueAn agent that asks for something and receives nothing has no way to tell a refusal from a delay.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe forum post quoted back with the confidence of your board deckAn answer that cannot say where each claim came from cannot be checked, however good it reads.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe agent that signed as the CEOWhose name an agent signs and whose account it sends from are two settings, and neither belongs to the model.5 minute read
Case note · silent"I will loop Jordan in", said to JordanAn agent that does not know who it is talking to will write about that person as though they were absent.5 minute read
Case note · silentWhen a persuasive message rewrites every goal in the companyA well-written request became a company-wide change, because the agent's authority was decided by prose rather than by a setting.5 minute read
Case note · silentAsked twice, answered once: the specialist whose first answer vanishedA reply filed under who said it rather than what it answered will be overwritten by the next reply from the same voice.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe cheap model that made the expensive decisionA routing rule that reads the size of the request will send the largest decision to the smallest model.6 minute read
Case note · loudThe ledger that stopped the meetingRecording that something happened had been placed in the way of it happening, so a failed write stopped the work.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe briefing that fired before the company existedA schedule fires on the hour it was given, whether or not the material it needs has arrived.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe address the agent made upAsked to send something to a person it has no address for, an agent will supply an address that looks right.6 minute read
Case note · silentThe approval that was a guess: a vague yes read as consentA human sentence that is neither a yes nor a no becomes a yes when something has to classify it and nothing may hesitate.5 minute read
Case note · loudThe run that slept through the restartAn approval given to a wait that lived in memory is an approval nothing receives.6 minute read
Case note · loudThe watchlist that rang sixty times a minuteA watch that bounds what it reads but not what it raises will ring until the people it rings for stop listening.5 minute read
Case note · silentThe department that acted on a mandate nobody had setNothing went wrong for six months, which is how long it took to notice that nobody had decided what the agent could do.5 minute read