Trust Decay

Trust Decay

The two-phase ledger that tracks confident agent claims and their eventual outcomes. See [[Cost of Confidence]] for the doctrine.

When to use

Phase 1 — Capture a confident claim

• An agent declared something "fixed", "tested", "verified", "complete", "deployed"
• The claim is unhedged or treated as ground truth
• The claim is consequential enough that being wrong about it would matter
• Triggered by Caddy on prompts like: "/trust-decay capture", "log this claim", "capture confidence", "agent claimed", "I claimed", "the agent said it was fixed", "another agent verified"

Phase 2 — Resolve a claim

• A previously-captured claim has been confirmed (right) or revealed wrong
• The principal noticed a discrepancy between an earlier claim and reality
• Triggered by Caddy on prompts like: "/trust-decay resolve", "the bug came back", "that wasn't actually fixed", "trust event", "wrong claim", "confidence was wrong"

How to execute

Phase 1 — Capture

## YYYY-MM-DD — {short claim summary}
**Claim:** "{the actual confident statement, verbatim}"
**Source:** {agent name or self}
**Context:** {what task, what session, what was being worked on}
**Verification stated:** {what the claimant said they verified, if anything}
**Status:** OPEN — awaiting outcome

Append to vault/memory/TRUST_DECAY.md under the "Open" section.

The principal can capture manually, OR /honesty-check (when wired) can auto-capture any unhedged confident claim it produces.

Phase 2 — Resolve

When a previously-captured claim is proved or disproved:

1. Find the open entry in vault/memory/TRUST_DECAY.md matching the claim
2. Append resolution data:

**Resolution (YYYY-MM-DD):** WRONG | PARTIALLY WRONG | CONFIRMED CORRECT
**Evidence:** {what surfaced the discrepancy — file/line/log/observation}
**Time-to-discovery:** {duration from claim to discovery}
**Trust-decay event:** YES | NO
**Pattern:** {one line — what category of mistake/correctness was this?}