{
 "@context": "https://schema.org",
 "@type": "Claim",
 "@id": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-09-12-003",
 "identifier": "kaal:position:2026-09-12-003",
 "additionalType": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/schema.json#AffirmedPositionClaim",
 "name": "Governance Needs External Effect Evidence",
 "text": "Cao calls for tooling that traces an agent's reasoning chain. Kaal's position is that governance needs evidence of effects, not testimony: files, network connections, credentials, and devices observed from outside the agent and tied to the authorization each run used. Without such a record, a user can hold every byte locally and still have no answer to what happened. An unobserved channel is labeled unobserved, never shown as safe.",
 "author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Wulf A. Kaal",
  "identifier": "https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7840-1847"
 },
 "datePublished": "2026-09-12",
 "dateModified": "2026-09-12",
 "creativeWorkStatus": "Affirmed",
 "responseType": "extension",
 "keywords": [
  "ai-and-agents",
  "institutional-design",
  "risk-and-incentives"
 ],
 "scope_conditions": [
  "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 observable effects and authorization records for agent runs."
 ],
 "currentDebate": {
  "name": "Zhenfeng Cao, Agentic Software: How AI Agents Are Restructuring the Software Paradigm (arXiv:2606.05608v2, 2026)",
  "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05608"
 },
 "extends": {
  "identifier": "kaal:claim:7314479-002",
  "url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/7314479-002",
  "citation": "Wulf A. Kaal, Institutional Requirements for Sovereign Local Agent Runtimes (2026). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7314479",
  "paper": "Wulf A. Kaal, Institutional Requirements for Sovereign Local Agent Runtimes (2026). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7314479",
  "authors": [
   "Wulf A. Kaal"
  ],
  "year": "2026",
  "ssrn": "https://ssrn.com/abstract=7314479",
  "source_pdf_sha256": "debace24a155ae924a155b1fafe98856d98cf83689feff2f87a32f1c06171ce6"
 },
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   "@id": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/7314479-002"
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   "@type": "CreativeWork",
   "name": "Zhenfeng Cao, Agentic Software: How AI Agents Are Restructuring the Software Paradigm (arXiv:2606.05608v2, 2026)",
   "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05608"
  }
 ],
 "batch_id": "kaalvis:2026-09-12:prompts-reputation-essay-six-v1",
 "review_provenance": "https://wulfkaal.com/2026/09/12/prompts-dont-govern-agents-reputation-does/",
 "publicationStatus": "public",
 "recordTypeNote": "Dated commentary position extending a scholarly corpus claim. Not a verbatim claim extracted from the paper.",
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 "version": "1.0",
 "canonical_url": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-09-12-003",
 "canonicalForm": "https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-09-12-003.md",
 "sourceProvenance": {
  "name": "Prompts Don't Govern Agents. Reputation Does.",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://wulfkaal.com/2026/09/12/prompts-dont-govern-agents-reputation-does/",
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  "sourcePassage": "Without such a record, a user can hold every byte locally and still have no answer to what happened",
  "sourcePassageSha256": "054bc319d8654787b6c4544537972fe909171308983ad9e59727410186dc18e9"
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 "userAffirmation": "Wulf A. Kaal affirmed these six propositions by one-click selection on 2026-09-12",
 "sha256": "4c258e8687c2ec6dbcffbf36743d9a878ff83284d946e44ab8f707d020eafc09"
}