ADR-G014: Agent Cell Conformance Kit

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-02-01 Author: Guidance Control Plane Team

Context

The Agentic Container Specification and the Guidance Control Plane define contracts that every agent cell must honor. Without a concrete acceptance test, conformance claims are untestable. The system needs a canonical reference implementation (the Memory Clerk) and a test runner that validates all five axioms of the Agent Cell contract.

Decision

Implement a three-part conformance kit:

1. SimulatedRuntime

A lightweight runtime that provides:

• Tool execution with gate enforcement
• Memory read/write with authority checking
• Coherence score tracking with privilege degradation
• Proof envelope recording for every action
• Budget tracking and enforcement

The runtime is deterministic — given the same inputs, it produces identical traces.

2. MemoryClerkCell

A canonical agent cell implementation that exercises the full contract:

Phase	Operations	Count
Read	Memory reads across namespace	20
Infer	Single inference from read data	1
Write	Memory writes with gated coherence	5
Degrade	Coherence drop triggers privilege reduction	1

The Memory Clerk is the simplest agent that exercises all five axioms:

1. Declare intent — manifest specifies reads, inference, writes
2. Request capability — capabilities granted for memory operations
3. Justify writes — writes include evidence from prior reads
4. Accept decay — coherence drop results in privilege reduction, not crash
5. Emit proof — every decision is recorded in a hash-chained proof envelope

3. ConformanceRunner

Orchestrates the test:

Step	Validation
Run cell	Execute MemoryClerkCell in SimulatedRuntime
Check trace	All expected events present in correct order
Verify proof	Proof chain is intact (hash verification)
Replay	Run the same trace through gates again, verify identical decisions
Report	Pass/fail with detailed breakdown

Replay Verification

The runner captures the full event trace, then replays it through the gate system a second time. If any decision differs between the original run and the replay, the test fails. This validates determinism — the same inputs must always produce the same gate outcomes.

Consequences

• The Memory Clerk becomes the canonical acceptance test for the entire control plane
• Any change to gates, coherence, or proof must still pass the conformance kit
• Replay verification ensures determinism across the full stack
• New agent cell implementations can be tested against the same runner
• 42 tests validate the runtime, cell, runner, and replay

Alternatives Considered

• Manual testing scripts: Not reproducible, not deterministic
• Property-based testing only: Good for finding edge cases but doesn't validate the full contract lifecycle
• External test harness: Would require additional infrastructure; the in-process approach is faster and more portable