Extension: Zhenfeng Cao, Agentic Software: How AI Agents Are Restructuring the Software Paradigm (arXiv:2606.05608v2, 2026)

Record: kaal:position:2026-09-12-002 · 2026-09-12

Cao leaves constraints to human articulation. Kaal's position is that authority must be structural instead. The agent proposes, a separate component that alone holds the credentials decides, and irreversible actions go to a named person. Reputation may inform discovery, routing, pricing, and allocation, but it may never grant permission, enlarge authority, or substitute for an enforcement boundary.

Affirmed commentary position. This record extends a source-bound scholarly claim but is not a verbatim paper claim.

Holds when

Cao's paper is a position paper citing benchmark evidence, not an empirical test of these claims.
The position is Kaal's own argument in the essay Prompts Don't Govern Agents. Reputation Does.
The position does not validate Cao's figures, benchmark methodology, or reported benchmark results.
The position is limited to credentialed actions and irreversible agent effects.

Current debate

Zhenfeng Cao, Agentic Software: How AI Agents Are Restructuring the Software Paradigm (arXiv:2606.05608v2, 2026)

Scholarly basis

kaal:claim:7314479-020
Wulf A. Kaal, Institutional Requirements for Sovereign Local Agent Runtimes (2026). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7314479
Source PDF sha256: debace24a155ae924a155b1fafe98856d98cf83689feff2f87a32f1c06171ce6

Topics

reputation consensus-and-security governance-design

Provenance

Affirmed in kaalvis:2026-09-12:prompts-reputation-essay-six-v1 on 2026-09-12. Review record.

Verify

Canonical markdown sha256: 39b36795d32dd22a42ec1e0e6f21fc83edb742fb980e218d10de1390c5fb862d
curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-09-12-002.md | sha256sum