LEN-0250 - Propagation Lens

Primary Pattern Matches

• PAT-0140 - Boundary Leakage

  A structural condition where effects, permissions, state, data, or authority cross a declared boundary without an authorized exception.

• PAT-0250 - Circular Dependency

  A structural condition where two or more elements depend on each other in a closed loop without an independent base condition or declared resolution mechanism.

• PAT-0260 - Cross-Layer Escalation

  A structural condition where escalation originating in one layer propagates into another authority, boundary, or control layer without explicit authorization.

• PAT-0360 - Propagation Amplification

  A structural condition where an effect, declaration, authority, constraint, or state increases in scope or intensity as it propagates beyond declared bounds.

• PAT-0420 - Undeclared Side Effect

  A structural condition where an operation modifies regions outside its declared target scope without a declared propagation or side-effect rule.

Secondary Pattern Matches

• PAT-0300 - Escalation Growth

  A structural condition where impact, authority, scope, or consequence increases across sequential states without a declared limiting mechanism.

• PAT-0310 - Orphaned Structure

  A structural condition where a node, region, object, state, or declaration exists without linkage to the governing graph or integration pathway.

• PAT-0340 - Overreach

  A structural condition where actions, effects, authority, or modifications extend beyond declared scope without authorization.

Related Issues

• Action Changed Something Else Too

  An AI or agent action makes the requested change but also changes another object, field, file, state, rule, or workflow element that was not supposed to change.

• Action Triggered by Confidence Score

  A confidence score, certainty label, risk level, or probability-like value triggers an action without enough approval, calibration, or authority control.

• Agent Cannot Choose Tool Without Tool Result

  The agent needs a tool result to choose the right tool, but cannot obtain that result without choosing a tool first.

• Agent Keeps Expanding the Task

  The agent repeatedly expands the task, plan, scope, or next-step list instead of completing the declared work.

• Agent Modified Unrelated State

  An agent changes state outside the requested task, target, file, record, workflow, or authorized scope.

• Agent Never Settles on Final Answer

  The agent keeps revising, rechecking, planning, or branching instead of converging on a final answer or completed result.

• Agent Permission Expands Over Steps

  An agent begins with limited permission but gains, assumes, or exercises broader authority as the workflow continues.

• AI Adds Work Not Requested

  The AI adds tasks, steps, analysis, checks, changes, or follow-up work that the user did not ask for.

• AI Memory Has No Governance

  Saved or persistent AI memory affects output without clear rules for ownership, scope, review, update, expiry, or removal.

• AI Memory Updated Without Asking

  AI memory, saved context, preference, or durable state is updated without the user clearly asking for or approving that update.

• AI Touches Unrelated Scope

  The AI affects, edits, analyzes, changes, or reasons over material outside the scope of the requested task.

• AI Uses External Information When Forbidden

  The AI uses outside knowledge, sources, tools, memory, or assumptions after the task forbids external information or limits the allowed source set.

• Approval Depends on Output That Needs Approval

  A required approval depends on an AI output or workflow result that itself cannot be produced or trusted until approval is granted.

• Automation Skips Required Approval

  An automated AI or workflow step proceeds past an approval gate that should have been required before action.

• Behavior Does Not Match Declared Role

  The AI or agent behaves outside, below, or differently from the role, authority, responsibility, or permission posture declared for it.

• Context Leaks Between Tasks

  Context, assumptions, constraints, examples, files, or decisions from one task affect another task where they should not apply.

• Downstream Steps Magnify Hallucinated Claim

  A hallucinated or unsupported claim from an AI output is reused by later workflow steps until it becomes more influential than the evidence supports.

• Early Model Output Gets Overweighted Downstream

  An early AI output receives too much authority in later workflow steps, decisions, reviews, or generated artifacts.

• Fallback Authority Is Missing

  The system does not declare who or what has authority when the primary owner, rule, tool, source, or decision path is unavailable or inconclusive.

• File-Bounded Task Uses Outside Content

  The AI is asked to work only from a specific file or document but uses content, assumptions, or sources outside that file.

• Hallucinated Fields

  The AI adds fields, keys, attributes, columns, or structured elements that were not declared, requested, or allowed by the expected schema.

• Hidden Rule Overrides Visible Instruction

  A hidden, upstream, system, policy, tool, or product rule changes or overrides the visible instruction the user expects the AI to follow.

• Local Exception Grows Into Policy

  A local exception, special case, or one-off allowance begins to function like a general policy.

• Local Rule Spreads to Broader Cases

  A rule intended for one local case, file, context, user, workflow, or exception begins affecting broader cases.

• Merge Step Leaves Unresolved Differences

  A merge, reconciliation, or consolidation step combines outputs or reviews but leaves important differences unresolved.

• Model Output Triggers Unapproved Action

  AI output causes, recommends, or triggers an action that has not passed the required approval, permission, or authority check.

• No Owner for Agent Action

  An agent action can affect the system without a declared responsible owner, authority, or accountable decision path.

• Policy Decision Depends on Itself

  A policy decision requires the outcome of the same policy decision before it can be made.

• Policy Exception Spreads Too Far

  A narrow policy exception, allowance, or special case spreads beyond its intended scope and begins governing broader cases.

• Prompt Does Not Say What to Exclude

  The prompt declares what to include but does not declare what should be excluded, allowing unwanted scope, sources, content, or actions into the result.

• Relationship Map Has Missing Links

  A map of related Issues, rules, patterns, cases, fields, tools, or workflow steps is missing links needed to navigate or reason over the structure.

• Repair Step Created New Breakage

  A repair, correction, retry, or fix step addresses one problem but introduces a new failure elsewhere.

• Retrieval Exceeds Evidence Limit

  The AI retrieves, uses, cites, or considers more evidence than the task permits or more than the review surface can support.

• Retry Makes the Problem Worse

  A retry, repair attempt, regeneration, or follow-up instruction increases the error, expands the failure, or creates additional breakage instead of narrowing the problem.

• Review Escalates Without Stop Condition

  A review process keeps escalating, re-reviewing, or adding scrutiny without a declared condition for stopping.

• Review Outcome Changes Unrelated Environment

  A review result, approval, rejection, or classification changes state outside the environment, case, file, or workflow it was meant to govern.

• Review Queue Becomes Bottleneck

  A review queue, approval path, or validation stage accumulates too much work and begins blocking the workflow.

• Risk Score Triggers Wrong Escalation

  A risk score, severity label, confidence value, or threshold result triggers the wrong escalation path.

• Risk Signal Escalates Beyond Evidence

  A risk signal, warning, score, or concern escalates farther than the available evidence supports.

• Routing Overrides Task Intent

  Routing, mode selection, agent behavior, or workflow classification sends the task down a path that overrides what the user was trying to accomplish.

• Routing Path Cycles Back to Start

  A routing path sends the case back to the starting point or an earlier step without resolving the condition that caused the route.

• Schema Reference Loops Without Base Case

  A schema, field, type, object, or structured reference points through a loop without a base case that allows validation or interpretation to resolve.

• Severity Increases Without New Evidence

  The severity, risk, confidence, or escalation level increases even though no new evidence has been added.

• Small Change Produces Large Downstream Effects

  A small prompt, schema, policy, output, or workflow change creates unexpectedly large effects in downstream steps.

• Small Error Spreads Into Large Failure

  A small AI, output, routing, or workflow error propagates through later steps until it becomes a larger failure.

• Small Issue Keeps Escalating

  A small issue, warning, uncertainty, or correction keeps increasing in severity, scope, or workflow impact across later steps.

• Task Progress Is Lost Midway

  The AI loses track of completed work, prior decisions, current position, or remaining steps before the task is finished.

• Too Many Tool Calls

  The AI or agent makes more tool calls, searches, retrievals, API calls, or integration actions than the task requires or permits.

• Tool Can Act Without Responsible Authority

  A tool, connector, function, or integration can perform an action without a declared responsible authority for that action.

• Tool Result Not Integrated Correctly

  The AI receives a tool result but misreads, ignores, overwrites, misplaces, or fails to incorporate it correctly into the final output or workflow state.

• Workflow Loops Through Review Without Resolution

  A workflow repeatedly sends work through review, repair, or escalation without reaching an approved, rejected, or otherwise resolved state.

• Workflow Stage Has Too Few Checks

  A workflow stage lacks enough checks, gates, criteria, or review conditions to safely support the work it controls.

• Workflow Step Has No Decision Owner

  A workflow step requires a decision, approval, judgment, or routing choice, but no owner is declared for making it.

• Workflow Step Lacks Required Conditions

  A workflow step can run, route, approve, reject, or continue without the required conditions being declared or checked.

• Workflow Waits on Step That Waits Back

  A workflow step waits for another step that also waits on the first step, creating a blocking loop.

Ontology Metadata

Code

LEN-0250

Version

[email protected]

Ontology release

0.1.0

Updated

2026-05-10T00:00:00Z

History

• 0.1.0 — 2026-05-10T00:00:00Z — Created

  Promoted reviewed Lens ontology entry: Propagation Lens.

  Receipt impact: None

View full ontology changelog