Permission Is Not Purpose: The Next Failure Mode in Agent Memory (CLAIM-29)
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Novel analysis of agent memory failure patterns, directly relevant to AI agents.
Summary
CLAIM-29 identifies 'mandate escape'—a failure where an agent passes all authority and norm checks yet performs a task outside its deployed purpose. The article introduces a 'purpose envelope': a frozen, agent-external declaration of domains and object mappings that acts as a deterministic gate, distinct from permission grants. In experiments, five authorized, shape-clean rows passed both authority-only and CLAIM-28 norm gates but were wrong, confirming the gap that purpose (already present as an unread field) must become load-bearing.