{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"computability_boundary_mapping__tech_ethics_ai_governance","archetype_slug":"computability_boundary_mapping","domain_slug":"tech_ethics_ai_governance","title":"Scope-Enforced, Abstaining Certification for Autonomous-Agent Policy Compliance","opportunity_summary":"Replace forced Boolean verdicts from an allegedly universal compliance analyzer with model-relative verifier modes that enforce their accepted scope and preserve exact verdict, witness, UNKNOWN, out-of-scope, and system-failure states. The opportunity is conditional on showing that an actual governance workflow makes unbounded or universal claims rather than already enforcing a finite, reviewed model.","adopter_authorizer":"The designated AI governance owner can authorize the offline pilot; production label changes require joint approval from governance, formal assurance, and the accountable deployment owner.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If the stated universal certification practice exists, preventing unsupported clearance and unjustified rejection would materially improve truthful assurance and reduce wasted effort. The packet supplies no evidence of prevalence or realized harm, so impact remains conditional."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"Governance boards, assurance teams, developers, operators, reviewers, and affected people have recognizable interests in defensible verdicts, but the packet contains no adoption inquiry, demand evidence, or proof that organizations currently make the challenged claim."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Relative to the specified timeout-to-Boolean baseline, enforced fragment membership and explicit abstention directly prevent inconclusive analysis from becoming a substantive verdict. Relative to red-teaming and monitoring, the proposal adds model-relative proof obligations and computability-boundary classification, although operational benefit is unobserved."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The framing is internally differentiated, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and the packet provides no basis for distinguishing it from existing formal-assurance governance, assurance cases, scoped verification, or abstaining interfaces."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"An offline pilot using one formalized policy, one agent language, and finite fixtures appears technically bounded. A sound unrestricted reduction, mechanically enforced scope, useful abstractions, and reliable downstream label preservation require specialized work and may fail."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The packet identifies an offline-pilot authorizer, joint production approvers, prohibited uses, and halt conditions. Feasibility is reduced by the need for coordinated governance, formal-assurance, developer, and deployment-owner action."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The candidate provides explicit problem and intervention falsifiers, seeded tests, comparison modes, rollback criteria, and independent review. It remains a hypothesis, lacks operational acceptance thresholds, and supplies no observed results or checked reduction."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":5,"rationale":"UNKNOWN, out-of-scope, witness, and system-failure states, combined with no production use, independent review, and withdrawal of affected guarantees, form a strong safety net against false assurance during evaluation."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"Versioned boundary records and standardized output states could be reused across workflows, but each policy, language, environment model, and model change may require bespoke formalization and reclassification; complexity may also make exact modes unusable at scale."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Offline formalization and evaluation of one existing policy and agent language using 30 bounded or finite-state fixtures, seeded timeout and scope cases, baseline comparison, interface checks, and independent formal review.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Existing policy and agent artifacts are available without major data-acquisition work.","The exercise uses no production decisions or live deployment.","Formal-methods, governance, developer, and independent-review labor are included.","No new general-purpose verifier is built during this step."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Prepare one organizational certification workflow for controlled adoption, including enforceable input contracts, verifier routing, distinct output states, evidence versioning, audit records, review procedures, and integration testing.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Adoption is limited to one policy-language-environment family.","Existing analysis infrastructure can be adapted rather than replaced.","Security, compliance, training, and partner-coordination work are included.","The checked pilot finds no fundamental proof, scope-enforcement, or interface defect."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"1M_TO_5M","scope":"Launch the governed certification process across multiple agent teams or material deployment workflows, including production-grade integrations, assurance reviews, access controls, monitoring, training, acceptance testing, and rollout coordination.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Multiple teams require distinct adapters or formal models.","Production approval remains jointly governed rather than automated.","High-risk cases retain manual review and explicit UNKNOWN handling.","The number and complexity of policies and agent languages are presently unspecified."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Maintain formal models, verifier modes, versioned evidence, regression fixtures, independent review, audits, incident handling, and reclassification after policy, language, model, or environment changes.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The deployment covers a limited organizational portfolio rather than arbitrary external submissions.","Specialist formal-assurance and governance capacity is retained.","Major new verifier development and organization-wide expansion are excluded.","Change frequency and exact assurance obligations are unknown."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The proposed failure is precise and observable, but the packet provides no records showing that an actual program claims unrestricted exact certification or converts timeouts and unsupported inputs into Boolean verdicts; the stated problem falsifier could still hold."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The designated AI governance owner is identified for an offline pilot, with governance, formal assurance, and the accountable deployment owner identified for production authorization."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that enforced scope, routed verifier modes, and preserved abstention states will prevent seeded timeout, out-of-scope, and abstraction cases from receiving unsupported Boolean verdicts relative to the specified baseline."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"The sealed candidate authorizes an offline test of one policy and language on 30 bounded or finite-state fixtures, with seeded counterexamples, mode comparisons, independent review, and no production use."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The first step is offline and reversible, production decisions are excluded, approval roles are explicit, and halt conditions cover unenforceable scope, missed seeded violations, collapsed labels, and proof gaps."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The pilot is scoped sufficiently for a broad first-evidence band, but production scale, integration footprint, policy and language count, assurance obligations, and change frequency are unspecified, leaving deployment and recurring ranges low-confidence."}},"blocking_evidence":["Records establishing whether the target certification workflow actually communicates a universal or unbounded guarantee and forces inconclusive cases into Boolean labels.","A checked formalization of the accepted program language, policy semantics, environment model, interaction bounds, and quantifiers.","Independent review of any claimed reduction against the unrestricted checker and of total-correctness claims for accepted fragments.","Evidence that fragment membership can be mechanically enforced and cannot be silently expanded.","Operational evidence that downstream systems and reviewers preserve UNKNOWN, out-of-scope, abstraction-alarm, and system-failure states without Boolean coercion.","A bounded prior-art comparison sufficient to determine whether the governance design has a distinct contribution."],"next_evidence_step":"Run the authorized offline study on one existing policy-language workflow: first audit its documented claims and accepted-input controls, then compare the current timeout-to-Boolean baseline with the proposed scoped router on 30 bounded or finite-state fixtures containing seeded violations, timeouts, out-of-scope inputs, and abstraction cases. Falsify the problem if the workflow already enforces a reviewed finite model and makes no universal claim; falsify the intervention if it fails to prevent any seeded unsupported Boolean verdict or independent reviewers cannot reproduce classifications from the recorded evidence.","research_questions":["Does the existing workflow actually claim exact terminating compliance certification over arbitrary programs or unbounded interactions?","Are all accepted inputs already restricted to an enforced finite or otherwise decidable model with a reviewed total-correct checker?","What exact language, environment, policy semantics, and quantifiers define the certification claim?","Can accepted-fragment membership be checked mechanically before analysis and preserved across version changes?","Does independent review validate the proposed unrestricted reduction and each fragment-specific correctness claim?","Do downstream interfaces and action rules preserve UNKNOWN and other non-Boolean states without interpreting them as safe?","How often do exact, abstract, UNKNOWN, out-of-scope, and failure states occur on representative non-production fixtures?","What materially differs from existing scoped formal-assurance and abstaining-certification practice?","Does computational complexity make a decidable exact mode unusable for realistic bounded instances?","Which high-social-risk cases would be excluded by the enforceable fragment, and how would they be governed?"] ,"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Problem prevalence and stakeholder demand are unsupported.","Prior art, world novelty, and material distinctiveness are unmeasured.","The actual certification language may already be finite, bounded, and covered by a total checker.","No reduction, total-correctness proof, or operational classification has yet been independently checked.","Pilot effects, label-retention performance, and reviewer reproducibility are unobserved.","Formal conformance does not establish ethical legitimacy, policy completeness, affected-party rights, or real-world model accuracy.","Production integration scope and recurring maintenance demand are unspecified, so deployment costs have low confidence."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No external sources were used. Prior art is marked UNSEARCHED, so this assessment makes no claim about novelty, prevalence, market size, existing implementations, realized impact, or whether comparable formal-assurance and abstention practices already exist."}