Handoff and Reliance Control Surface
The Handoff / Reliance Control Surface defines how agent output moves into another actor, system, workflow stage, decision, institutional record, or real-world action. It covers both operational handoff and human reliance.
What question does it answer?
Who or what relied on the agent output, and was that reliance governed?
What does handoff failure look like?
Failures include a customer acting on incorrect policy guidance, a next agent inheriting an unverified summary, generated research entering a legal or academic filing, or a downstream team treating an AI-created assumption as established state.
The consequence often appears after the output leaves the model interface. Handoff is where generated content becomes behavior, commitment, evidence, or institutional action.
What evidence should an audit inspect?
- intended and actual receivers;
- reliance level and decision consequence;
- warnings, authority boundaries, and verification status visible at handoff;
- preserved context and source references;
- human review or acceptance records;
- downstream actions and affected records; and
- whether generated content remained distinguishable from verified state.
What is the decision consequence of a gap?
If downstream reliance is unknown, an investigator may be unable to bound incident impact or identify who requires correction. A technically contained output can still create material risk when the handoff path is uncontrolled.
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