A missing check is the most dangerous thing in an autonomous system, because silence reads as success. The Agent Forge inverts that: anything it cannot verify becomes a halt with a named reason, recorded to the trail.
The work suspends at the exact step in doubt. No guess is written, nothing downstream runs, and the reason is on the record for a human to act on.
“Couldn’t check” is never “passed.” The operator — the final court — decides, and that ruling is learned.
How a passed check differs from one that never ranInvariant If a step cannot be affirmatively verified, the work halts with a named reason. Silence is never treated as success.
Go deeper — fail-closed by default
How the system distinguishes a verification that passed from one that never ran, and why it always errs toward stopping.
