LEN-0280 - Reference Stability Lens

Primary Pattern Matches

• PAT-0350 - Persistence Instability

  A structural condition where persisted state cannot be stored and restored into an equivalent structure without alteration.

• PAT-0200 - Reference Instability

  A structural condition where references, identifiers, links, or anchors change across equivalent evaluations without a declared cause.

• PAT-0380 - Silent Mutation

  A structural condition where a change occurs without a corresponding declared update, authority update, or version change.

Secondary Pattern Matches

• PAT-0240 - Authority-State Mismatch

  A structural condition where observed system state no longer aligns with the declared authority state that is supposed to govern it.

• PAT-0210 - Non-Deterministic Execution

  A structural condition where equivalent inputs and declared constraints produce divergent outputs across executions.

Related Issues

• Actual Policy Differs From Declared Policy

  The policy the AI or workflow actually follows differs from the policy that is documented, declared, displayed, or expected.

• AI Forgets Earlier Constraints

  A constraint, instruction, preference, or decision that should persist through the task stops affecting later output.

• 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.

• Answer Has No Traceable Source Link

  The answer makes a claim, recommendation, citation, or factual statement without a source link or trace path that allows the user to verify where it came from.

• 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.

• Cannot Identify Authoritative State

  The user or workflow cannot tell which state, version, review result, decision, source, or output is currently authoritative.

• Citation Points to Wrong Source

  A citation, reference, link, or source pointer is present, but it points to the wrong source, wrong passage, wrong document, or unsupported evidence.

• Context Changes After Restore

  Restoring, reopening, resuming, or reloading a task changes the context that the AI uses to continue the work.

• Context Leaks Between Tasks

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

• Declared Owner Cannot Control Outcome

  A person, role, system, or policy is declared responsible for an outcome but does not have the actual authority or control needed to govern it.

• Early Model Output Gets Overweighted Downstream

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

• 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.

• Human Review and Automation Disagree

  A human review result and an automated AI or workflow result disagree without a declared rule for resolving the difference.

• Local Exception Grows Into Policy

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

• Model and Workflow Disagree on Next Step

  The AI model recommends or selects a next step that conflicts with the workflow state, required handoff, routing rule, or process sequence.

• No Owner for Agent Action

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

• Old Output Expectations Survive Migration

  Expectations from a prior model, prompt, schema, tool, or workflow survive a migration and continue shaping review or downstream handling after they should be replaced.

• Output Changed Without Declared Change

  Output shape, content, format, fields, or behavior changes without a declared change to the prompt, schema, model, workflow, or governing rule.

• Policy Area Has No Examples

  A policy, rule, standard, or guidance area has no examples showing how it should apply to real cases.

• Policy Update Not Reflected in Output

  A policy, rule, standard, or instruction has been updated, but the AI output still follows the older version.

• Prompt Behavior Changed Without Version Change

  A prompt begins producing different behavior even though no prompt version, model version, workflow version, or declared dependency change is recorded.

• Prompt Only Works After Retry

  The prompt fails, misroutes, or produces an unusable response on one attempt but works after retry without a meaningful change to the input.

• 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.

• Results Vary Too Much

  Repeated or comparable runs produce outputs that vary more than the task, workflow, or user can tolerate.

• 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.

• Revoked Approval Still Treated as Active

  An approval, permission, exception, or authorization that was revoked continues to affect AI behavior or workflow decisions as if it were still active.

• 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.

• Rubric Changed but Results Did Not

  A review rubric, scoring rule, evaluation standard, or classification criterion changes, but AI results continue to reflect the old rubric.

• Same Contract Name Has Different Meanings

  The same prompt, schema, field, policy, tool, or workflow contract name is used in different places with different meanings.

• Same Instructions Allow Different Outputs

  The same instructions are broad or underspecified enough to allow materially different outputs that all appear compliant.

• Saved Memory Not Used

  A saved memory, preference, instruction, or durable context item exists but does not affect the AI output when it should.

• Saved Reference No Longer Works

  A saved source, citation, file reference, prompt reference, or workflow pointer previously worked but no longer resolves to the expected object or meaning.

• 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.

• Similar Cases Route to Different Outcomes

  Similar inputs, cases, prompts, or workflow states are routed to different outcomes without a declared difference that explains the split.

• Stale Context Affects Output

  Old context, prior instructions, outdated references, or earlier task state continue to affect output after they should no longer apply.

• Task Progress Is Lost Midway

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

• Validation Result Changes on Retry

  A validation, grading, review, classification, or pass/fail result changes after retry even though the input and declared validation rules did not change.

• Version Change Breaks Existing Prompt

  A prompt that previously produced usable results stops working after a version change in the model, tool, policy, schema, product surface, or workflow.

Ontology Metadata

Code

LEN-0280

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: Reference Stability Lens.

  Receipt impact: None

View full ontology changelog