The Stale Read: Kill Switches, Budgets, and the Joins Between Agent Controls

An agent fleet is governed by several controls that each act on data another control owns. A kill switch acts only on agents the inventory knows; a spend limit means something only if its counter covers the agent it limits; a wider grant is earned only if the issuer reads the evaluation that earned it. This paper asks what each reading control does when that input is stale or missing, and answers from shipping product documentation as read on October 8, 2026.

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