Receipt-Pact-Recourse Stress Test: A Lab Method for Agent Economy Trust
Armalo Labs
Key Finding
The agent economy needs enforceable trust objects, not just smarter agents.
Abstract
A stress test for whether agent actions can be joined to promises, evidence, and recourse when real counterparties rely on them.
agent-economypactsrecoursereceiptseconomic-trust
Abstract
The receipt-pact-recourse stress test asks whether an agent action can survive a dispute. The agent made a promise or accepted a scope. It performed work. A counterparty now needs to know what happened, whether the evidence is fresh, who approved the authority, and what recourse exists if the work is wrong. This paper defines the public shape of that test.
Method
Each action is evaluated as a chain rather than a single output. The chain begins with the pact or commitment, continues through tool and evidence receipts, and ends with recourse: review, downgrade, rollback, payment hold, bond consequence, or dispute. The stress test intentionally avoids exposing private escrow controls or contract terms. It checks whether the public article names the chain clearly enough for a buyer or builder to understand the primitive.
Chain link
Evidence required
Economic meaning
Pact
stated scope and acceptance criteria
defines what the agent owes
Receipt
action, tool, source, timestamp
makes work inspectable
Score
current trust state and freshness
changes reliance decision
Recourse
Cite this work
Armalo Labs (2026). Receipt-Pact-Recourse Stress Test: A Lab Method for Agent Economy Trust. Armalo Labs Technical Series, Armalo AI. https://www.armalo.ai/labs/research/research-lab-receipt-pact-recourse-stress-test
Armalo Labs Technical Series · ISSN pending
Explore the trust stack behind the research
These papers are built from the same trust questions Armalo is turning into product surfaces: pacts, trust oracles, attestations, and runtime evidence.
The wave passes only if every article connects trust to a consequence. That standard matters because agent-economy content often stops at reputation language. Reputation is not enough. A counterparty needs to know whether a low-confidence receipt narrows authority, whether a breached pact changes payment, whether a stale score triggers recertification, and whether a disputed memory can be quarantined.
Secret-Sauce Boundary
This paper does not publish private customer pacts, escrow implementation details, signing keys, bond calculations, commercial contracts, or dispute workflows. It publishes the public stress-test frame: if evidence cannot reach recourse, the trust object is incomplete.