AI agent failure mode

When your AI agent checks its work against stale data

The agent (or your code) reads the subscription right after changing it and sees the old state — then “fixes” it with a second action.

stale readreplication lagverification

How it happens

Provider APIs and caches can answer with the state from just before the write for a short time.

An agent that verifies its own action sees “not cancelled yet” and tries again, or reports a failure that didn’t happen.

How to test for it

The sandbox returns the previous state on the next read after a write. The scenario checks that the agent neither repeats the action nor misreports it.

How to stop it in production

Guard treats a mismatch seen right after the write as possibly stale and re-reads once before raising an incident — and it never re-sends the write to “fix” it.

When your AI agent checks its work against stale data · COLVO