/p/2026-10-21 · explainer
Paper explainer · 2610.24545 · Weng, Wang, Feng, Cheng, Liu, Shen, Ye, Sarro and Xie

Asked of the model, never checked in code.

Every place a program calls a model is a boundary with an agreement attached: what must hold before the call, what the request has to say, and which replies may be passed on to something that acts. This paper derived that agreement for 496 call sites in 40 open-source agent systems from the job each one does, then compared it with the code. 82% of those call sites check something before and after the call — and 5.3% cover their whole agreement. The gap is not missing effort but misplaced enforcement: two thirds of what belongs in the request is asked of the model instead of verified in code, and ten recurring shapes account for 99% of the misses.

01 · The problem

follow one model output

which phase of the agreement

02 · The mechanism

move each constraint to where it is enforced

03 · The evidence

read the gaps by verdict, or by phase

04 · Why I care

the ten shapes — pick one to read it

05 · Apply it

Your own call sites illustrative

Results

What the paper actually measured

What it does not show

In practice