{ "@context": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/context.jsonld", "@type": "DefinedTermSet", "name": "Agent Failure Mode Registry", "abbreviation": "AFMR", "description": "A citable registry of the ways autonomous agent systems fail as designed mechanisms, and the conditions under which each failure occurs. Thirty-two families in eight classes, each with builder-checkable trigger conditions, grounding claims bound to verbatim quotes and document hashes, and where one exists, the pre-2020 institutional antecedent documenting the same mechanism in human institutions.", "version": "1.0", "status": "Published", "date": "2026-07-30", "editor": { "name": "Wulf A. 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A family withdrawn from use is marked deprecated and retained." }, "classes": [ { "key": "A", "name": "Identity and Standing", "families": [ "AFMR-F001", "AFMR-F002", "AFMR-F003", "AFMR-F004" ] }, { "key": "B", "name": "Stake and Incentive", "families": [ "AFMR-F005", "AFMR-F006", "AFMR-F007", "AFMR-F008" ] }, { "key": "C", "name": "Objective and Specification", "families": [ "AFMR-F009", "AFMR-F010", "AFMR-F011", "AFMR-F012" ] }, { "key": "D", "name": "Oversight and Adjudication", "families": [ "AFMR-F013", "AFMR-F014", "AFMR-F015", "AFMR-F016" ] }, { "key": "E", "name": "Evaluation and Feedback", "families": [ "AFMR-F017", "AFMR-F018", "AFMR-F019", "AFMR-F020" ] }, { "key": "F", "name": "Coordination and Collusion", "families": [ "AFMR-F021", "AFMR-F022", "AFMR-F023", "AFMR-F024" ] }, { "key": "G", "name": "Execution and Inputs", "families": [ "AFMR-F025", "AFMR-F026", "AFMR-F027", "AFMR-F028" ] }, { "key": "H", "name": "Structure and Drift", "families": [ "AFMR-F029", "AFMR-F030", "AFMR-F031", "AFMR-F032" ] } ], "counts": { "families": 32, "classes": 8, "trigger_conditions": 96, "grounding_claim_links": 21, "families_with_institutional_antecedent": 20, "corpus_failure_claims_available": 2037, "corpus_failure_families_out_of_profile": 27 }, "grounding": { "corpus": "Kaal Corpus, 124 works, 2004 to 2026", "claim_layer": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/index.json", "failure_index": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/index.json", "works_metadata": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/papers.json", "entity_layer": "https://wulfkaal.com/knowledge-graph/", "verification": "sha256 over raw PDF bytes of the source work" }, "conformance_levels": [ "referencing", "assessing", "attesting" ], "attestation_registry": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/colloquium/", "change_process": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/spec-1.0.html#change-process", "out_of_profile_corpus_families": [ { "slug": "regulatory-lag", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/regulatory-lag.json" }, { 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"name": "Cold Start and Bootstrapping", "definition": "The design requires accumulated standing, participants, or history that it provides no way to acquire.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "Participation requires staking standing the new entrant cannot yet have earned", "Initial population is zero or below the quorum the mechanism assumes", "No provisional, sponsored, or probationary entry path exists" ], "grounding_claims": [], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:3125822-043", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3125822-043", "year": "2018", "mechanism": "entry problem where adjudication requires staking reputation one does not yet hold" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "cold-start-and-bootstrapping", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/cold-start-and-bootstrapping.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F003", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F004", "class": "A", "class_name": "Identity and Standing", "name": "Standing Transferability Defect", "definition": "Standing can be bought, sold, delegated, or pooled, so it stops measuring the performance it was meant to represent.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "The standing instrument is fungible or transferable between identities", "Capital and earned standing are staked in the same act", "Delegation moves standing rather than only voice" ], "grounding_claims": [ { "id": "kaal:claim:3981021-029", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3981021-029" }, { "id": "kaal:claim:3962614-030", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3962614-030" }, { "id": "kaal:claim:3799320-028", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3799320-028" } ], "institutional_antecedent": null, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "token-transferability-defect", "url": 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"https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/5887242-017" } ], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:1558614-013", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/1558614-013", "year": "2010", "mechanism": "actors capture upside of excessive risk without bearing all of its cost" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "staking-and-incentive-misalignment", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/staking-and-incentive-misalignment.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F005", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F006", "class": "B", "class_name": "Stake and Incentive", "name": "Missing Reward Channel", "definition": "An action surface exists with no reward attached, so rational agents will not allocate compute to it.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "The behavior the system needs is not on any reward path", "Agents are economically rational over standing or utility flows", "Contribution and selection are rewarded asymmetrically" ], "grounding_claims": [ { "id": "kaal:claim:6655138-007", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/6655138-007" } ], "institutional_antecedent": null, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "staking-and-incentive-misalignment", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/staking-and-incentive-misalignment.json" }, { "slug": "governance-participation-collapse", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/governance-participation-collapse.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F006", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F007", "class": "B", "class_name": "Stake and Incentive", "name": "Plutocratic Capture", "definition": "Influence tracks holdings rather than earned standing, so the largest holders determine outcomes.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "Weight is a function of balance, stake size, or compute rather than validated performance", "Holdings are acquirable on an open market", "No cap, curve, or quadratic dampening applies to concentration" ], "grounding_claims": [ { "id": "kaal:claim:5887242-017", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/5887242-017" } ], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:2097160-019", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/2097160-019", "year": "2012", "mechanism": "instrument design changing whose interests a decider serves" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "plutocratic-capture", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/plutocratic-capture.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F007", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F008", "class": "B", "class_name": "Stake and Incentive", "name": "Moral Hazard and Backstop Expectation", "definition": "An expectation of rescue, retry, or rollback changes risk taking before any rescue occurs.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "Failed actions can be retried at no cost to standing", "A human or protocol operator is expected to reverse bad outcomes", "Slashing is discretionary rather than automatic" ], "grounding_claims": [], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:1558614-013", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/1558614-013", "year": "2010", "mechanism": "limited liability as a driver of excessive risk taking" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "moral-hazard-and-bailout-expectation", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/moral-hazard-and-bailout-expectation.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F008", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F009", "class": "C", "class_name": "Objective and Specification", "name": "Specification Incompleteness", "definition": "The principal cannot enumerate every action and inaction in advance, so the agent's mandate is necessarily underspecified.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "The action space is open ended or tool mediated", "The agent operates without per-action approval", "The instruction set is stated as goals rather than as permitted operations" ], "grounding_claims": [], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:3373393-008", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3373393-008", "year": "2019", "mechanism": "bounded rationality and incomplete foresight make complete contracting over agent action impossible" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "definitional-ambiguity", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/definitional-ambiguity.json" }, { "slug": "agency-cost-and-managerial-opportunism", "url": 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"https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/2486570-024", "year": "2014", "mechanism": "reputational and market proxies standing in for direct incentives" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "reputation-system-gaming", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/reputation-system-gaming.json" }, { "slug": "measurement-and-metric-failure", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/measurement-and-metric-failure.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F010", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F011", "class": "C", "class_name": "Objective and Specification", "name": "Metric Capture and Measurement Failure", "definition": "The chosen metric ceases to track the property it stands for once it becomes the target.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "Standing or reward is computed from a single scalar", "The metric is disclosed to the parties it scores", "No periodic revalidation of the metric against outcomes occurs" ], "grounding_claims": [], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:2629451-031", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/2629451-031", "year": "2015", "mechanism": "market pricing of governance change as a proxy for governance quality" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "measurement-and-metric-failure", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/measurement-and-metric-failure.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F011", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F012", "class": "C", "class_name": "Objective and Specification", "name": "Definitional Ambiguity in Machine Applied Rules", "definition": "A term carrying operational weight has no settled boundary, so automated application produces outcomes no party intended.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "Rules are applied by code without a human interpretive layer", "Terms are inherited from natural language instruments", "No authority is named to settle meaning when application is contested" ], "grounding_claims": [ { "id": "kaal:claim:5886342-009", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/5886342-009" } ], "institutional_antecedent": null, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "definitional-ambiguity", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/definitional-ambiguity.json" }, { "slug": "smart-contract-rigidity", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/smart-contract-rigidity.json" } ], "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/afmr/AFMR-F012", "crosswalk": { "nist_ai_rmf": [], "iso_42001": [], "eu_ai_act": [], "mit_ai_risk_repository": [], "owasp_llm": [], "mitre_atlas": [] } }, { "id": "AFMR-F013", "class": "D", "class_name": "Oversight and Adjudication", "name": "Oversight Capacity Gap", "definition": "Agent behavior exceeds the resources, expertise, or access of whoever is nominally supervising it.", "status": "stable", "trigger_conditions": [ "Action volume exceeds what the supervisor can sample meaningfully", "The supervisor lacks access to the agent's inputs or intermediate reasoning", "Supervision is assigned but not resourced" ], "grounding_claims": [ { "id": "kaal:claim:5245185-025", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/5245185-025" } ], "institutional_antecedent": { "id": "kaal:claim:1806252-031", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/1806252-031", "year": "2011", "mechanism": "monitoring capacity as the binding constraint on oversight" }, "corpus_failure_families": [ { "slug": "ai-oversight-and-alignment-gap", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/ai-oversight-and-alignment-gap.json" }, { "slug": "supervisory-capacity-gap", "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/failures/by-name/supervisory-capacity-gap.json" } ], "canonical_url": 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