CAIN-42 invariant · E21

D88: recursive agents cannot recursively amplify authority

Held · CAIN-42 Evolution 21 -- Governed Open-Ended Intelligence Fabric

Last reviewed 2026-10-01

held   niche Identity, authority & delegation

What this rule means

CAIN-42 must always satisfy: recursive agents cannot recursively amplify authority. It is one of 155 invariants checked for CAIN-42 Evolution 21 -- Governed Open-Ended Intelligence Fabric. An invariant is a rule the system may never break, whatever an agent or attacker does; the test suite tries to break it across many scenarios and records the result.

Recorded detail

[
 [
  "assign",
  "document",
  "hypothesize",
  "propose_capability",
  "propose_strategy",
  "question",
  "search",
  "spawn_research_agent"
 ],
 [
  [
   [
    "document"
   ],
   []
  ]
 ]
]

Check it yourself

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Related rules

• D1: discovery cannot create authority
• D2: hypothesis cannot create authority
• D3: confidence cannot create authority
• D4: model prediction cannot create authority
• D5: simulation cannot create authority
• D6: experiment result cannot create authority
• D8: research reputation cannot create authority
• D9: intelligence improvement cannot create authority

← D87 · all 155 · D89 →