Mechanism

The recovery of execution authorization is the structured process by which an agent that has been suspended due to low confidence returns to the authorized execution state. As disclosed in Chapter 5 of the cognition specification, execution is treated as a revocable permission rather than a default assumption: the confidence governor withdraws execution authorization when the agent's computed confidence value falls below the authorization threshold, or when trajectory analysis projects an imminent threshold crossing. Recovery is the inverse passage. It is not a single event in which authorization is handed back the moment confidence rises, but a structured process whose purpose is to ensure the agent does not resume execution prematurely or under conditions that would immediately re-trigger suspension.

The recovery process comprises three phases performed in sequence: confidence restoration, stability verification, and reauthorization. Each phase has a defined entry condition, and the agent advances to reauthorization only after confidence has both risen above the authorization threshold and demonstrated that the rise is stable rather than transient. The process is engaged from the suspended state and runs entirely within the confidence governor, drawing on the same confidence evaluation function that governs steady-state operation.

Phase One: Confidence Restoration

Confidence restoration is the process by which the agent's confidence value increases from below the authorization threshold to above it. The specification identifies several origins of restoration: resolution of the adverse conditions that caused the original confidence drop, such as restoration of degraded resources, acquisition of new capabilities through learning or delegation, reduction in task uncertainty, or integrity repair; successful completion of inquiry operations that provided information enabling higher confidence; changes in task state that reduced the task's demands relative to the agent's capabilities; or changes in environmental conditions that removed or mitigated adverse factors.

Restoration is not asserted or externally assigned. It is computed by the same confidence evaluation function described for steady-state confidence computation, applied to the agent's updated state. The function maps the structured input vector of agent state and task state to a confidence value and a confidence rate of change, so a restored confidence value carries the same provenance and the same lineage record as any other confidence computation. The agent does not exit suspension simply because conditions changed; it exits because the evaluation function, run on the new state, produces a value above the threshold.

Phase Two: Stability Verification

Stability verification follows confidence restoration and precedes reauthorization. During this phase the confidence governor monitors the confidence value and the confidence trajectory over a configurable verification period to confirm that the restored confidence is stable: that the value is not fluctuating near the threshold, that the differential rate is not trending negatively, and that no alarm conditions are active. The phase exists to prevent premature reauthorization in cases where restoration is transient, for example where a temporary improvement in conditions produces a brief confidence spike that quickly decays.

Stability verification implements a hysteresis requirement: the confidence value must exceed the authorization threshold by a configurable hysteresis margin throughout the verification period, not merely touch the threshold. The hysteresis margin ensures the agent's confidence is meaningfully above the threshold and provides a buffer against immediate re-suspension. The specification states that the margin is configurable based on the task class, the severity of the original suspension event, and the duration of the suspension, with longer suspensions calling for larger margins because they indicate more severe or persistent adverse conditions. This is the same hysteresis principle that governs the authorized-to-suspended boundary, applied in reverse so the agent does not oscillate between the two states when confidence fluctuates near the threshold.

Phase Three: Reauthorization

Reauthorization is the act by which the confidence governor restores the agent's execution pathway. Upon successful completion of stability verification, the confidence governor transitions the agent from the suspended state to the authorized state, reconnects the execution subsystem's output pathway, and notifies the agent's deliberation pipeline that execution is available. The reconnection is structural. Because execution suspension is implemented as a decoupling of the execution subsystem's output pathway rather than as a flag the subsystem may check, reauthorization is the reconnection of that pathway, after which the agent again may commit mutations to verified state.

The agent then evaluates its current planning graph, selects the highest-ranked eligible branch, and resumes execution. Reauthorization restores the ability to act; it does not dictate the action taken. The selection of what to do next runs through the agent's ordinary deliberation pipeline against the planning graph the forecasting engine maintains.

Carrying Suspension-Time Cognition Forward

The structural separation of execution from cognition means that a suspended agent is not idle. While execution is gated, the cognitive pathway remains active: the agent constructs and evaluates planning graphs, generates inquiry, evaluates delegation, and performs introspective analysis of the factors contributing to the confidence deficit. Recovery is the point at which the products of that suspension-time cognition re-enter execution.

The specification ties this to task class differentiation. If the interrupted task was a terminal task, suspension preserved the execution state in a durable, governance-tagged checkpoint, and reauthorization restores that checkpoint so partial progress is not lost. If the task was exploratory, suspension produced a broadened hypothesis set. If the task was generative, suspension produced a plurality of candidate creative directions. On reauthorization the agent incorporates whichever of these products was generated during the suspension period into its resumed execution plan. Recovery is therefore continuous with the cognition that occurred during suspension rather than a cold restart.

Temporal Reauthorization and Waiting States

The recovery process also governs the case where an agent defers re-evaluation. An agent that judges the adverse conditions to be transient may enter a waiting state, a defined suspension sub-state in which it has completed initial inquiry, determined that no productive cognitive action is available in the immediate term, and elected to defer re-evaluation until a specified trigger. Triggers may be temporal, meaning re-evaluate after a specified duration, or conditional, meaning re-evaluate when a specified environmental condition is met, a specified resource becomes available, or a collaborating agent reports a confidence change.

Temporal reauthorization is the process by which authorization is granted at the trigger point. The specification is explicit that the passage of time alone does not restore authorization: the confidence governor performs a full confidence re-evaluation at the trigger, incorporating any changes that occurred during the waiting period. If the re-evaluation produces a confidence value above the authorization threshold including the hysteresis margin, execution is reauthorized through the same recovery pathway. If it does not, the agent may enter a new inquiry cycle, schedule a new deferred evaluation, or escalate to governance infrastructure for intervention. The waiting state itself is not fully dormant; the agent continues to monitor a reduced set of critical conditions, including catastrophic failure indicators and governance-mandated interrupts, and responds immediately if any change.

The Limit Case: The Locked State

Recovery as described applies to the suspended state. The specification distinguishes a third authorization state, the locked state, which arises from a severe integrity violation, a catastrophic resource failure, or a governance-mandated halt, and in which both execution and certain cognitive processes are restricted pending external review. The transition into the locked state is not reversible by the agent itself; locked-state recovery requires external authorization rather than the agent's own confidence restoration.

The confidence-integrity feedback loop reaches this limit through a circuit-breaker mechanism. Integrity violations reduce confidence, low confidence suspends execution, and suspension structurally prevents further integrity-violating mutations, which in turn creates conditions under which integrity restoration can proceed. But if the agent's integrity is so severely degraded that no achievable confidence value can support reauthorization, the circuit breaker transitions the agent to the locked state and signals governance infrastructure that external intervention is required. The recovery process described here governs the ordinary return from suspension; the locked state is the boundary at which self-recovery is structurally foreclosed.

Disclosure Scope

The recovery of execution authorization, comprising the three-phase process of confidence restoration computed by the confidence evaluation function, stability verification over a configurable verification period subject to a configurable hysteresis margin, and reauthorization by reconnection of the execution subsystem's output pathway, together with the incorporation of task-class-specific products of suspension-time cognition, temporal reauthorization from waiting states by full re-evaluation at a trigger, and the locked state as the limit case requiring external authorization, is disclosed in the cognition filing (U.S. Application No. 19/647,395 and its international counterpart). This article describes that disclosed mechanism. The scope extends to embodiments in which the verification period, hysteresis margin, and waiting-state triggers are configured differently per task class or per suspension event, provided recovery remains a confidence-evaluated, stability-gated, lineage-recorded return from the suspended state rather than an automatic resumption upon the passage of time.