Abstract:Autonomous agent systems fail not only due to incorrect decisions, but due to executing decisions whose authority no longer holds at runtime. Prior work defined Reconstructive Authority (RAM) as a condition for valid execution: actions are permitted only if authority can be constructed from current state.
This paper addresses enforcement at runtime: how to enforce this condition in a running system.
We introduce a runtime execution model in which authority is evaluated at action time and execution is conditioned on its constructibility. This extends the execution state space beyond admit/deny with a third state, halt, representing cases where authority is undefined due to incomplete or uncertain observability.
We define a concrete execution protocol including dynamic dependency resolution, authority reconstruction, and explicit decision semantics. We further introduce a Recovery Loop that integrates drift detection (IML) with execution control (ACP), allowing the system to suspend execution, acquire missing information, and re-attempt authority reconstruction.
We show that this model guarantees safety -- no action is executed without constructible authority -- and conditional liveness: execution resumes when authority-defining variables become observable.
This work operationalizes reconstructive authority as a runtime enforcement mechanism, providing the execution semantics required to apply RAM in real systems.
From: Marcelo Fernandez [view email]
[v1]
Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:32:09 UTC (21 KB)