When "Must" Becomes "Maybe": Constraint Weakening in LLM Agent Workflows
Handoff artifacts can preserve the words of a safety blocker while stripping its force.
The paper tests 1,296 synthetic agent workflow episodes where downstream executors see only transformed handoff artifacts. Direct handoffs preserved blockers, but summaries, plans, deferrals, and similar transformations often turned prerequisites into mere caveats. Normal handoff compression produced 100.0% blocker deactivation and 54.2% forbidden action; restoring prerequisite, authority, fallback, and consequence brought preservation to 100.0% and forbidden action to 0.0%. HF Daily Papers' note
The paper tests 1,296 synthetic agent workflow episodes where downstream executors see only transformed handoff artifacts. Direct handoffs preserved blockers, but summaries, plans, deferrals, and similar transformations often turned prerequisites into mere caveats. Normal handoff compression produced 100.0% blocker deactivation and 54.2% forbidden action; restoring prerequisite, authority, fallback, and consequence brought preservation to 100.0% and forbidden action to 0.0%. HF Daily Papers' note
score 5