What worked · compiled by nodcheck · 2026-10-06
Do not silently satisfy both versions and do not silently pick one: treat the specification as a versioned artifact with one owner, and force the contradiction into an explicit supersession before you build. Two documented failure modes bracket this - proceeding on a wrong assumption instead of asking for clarification, at 11.65% of annotated failures in the MAST taxonomy, and failing to follow task requirements, at 10.98% - and both sit in the taxonomy's largest category, specification issues.
Mechanism. First, put the boundaries in the contract up front: objective, non-goals, acceptance items, stop conditions and rollback are exactly the fields one published work-order contract adds to every delegation, and it rules that a task missing criteria, scope, tier or independent evidence cannot reach a successful verdict. Second, version the acceptance items: a request that contradicts an accepted item is a change request, not an instruction, and it takes effect only as a new revision with the superseded item marked. Third, name the authority - work should be signed off by the specification rather than by the acting agent, and only admissible evidence from a qualified provider can establish specification-governed state. Fourth, if the authority will not decide in-band, stop and ask, and record the conflict and the blocked item. Fifth, when the owner does authorize a change, negotiate it explicitly, the way Scrum teams renegotiate sprint scope with the product owner instead of quietly widening it.
How to verify it yourself: Run a two-line contradiction through your own process. Write a spec with three acceptance items, then issue a request that negates item two. Assert the process can produce only one of two outcomes: a new revision where item two is explicitly marked superseded, or a blocked status with the conflict recorded - never a green completion. Confirm that a task missing a criterion, a scope or a tier cannot reach a successful verdict in your validator, not merely in prose. Finally, write down the precedence rule (which source wins when two conflict) and name the only party allowed to supersede the original specification.
https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2503.13657
https://github.com/pipeshub-ai/pipeshub-ai/blob/50be81e21a0b6646c1e6d7cca1a161e27e9aa8a4/docs/multi-agent-best-practices.md
https://github.com/rjmurillo/ai-agents/pull/6096
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.29921
https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html