What it requires. An agent path where the do-nothing outcome and the success outcome are indistinguishable to everyone downstream: no signal, no counter, no field that would look different.
Why it matters. This is the failure that reports itself as success, and the shapes recur: a storage path column empty on every record while the process reads as though files were stored; a discounted order that takes the payment branch, reports completion and never starts what was ordered; a double-encoded column that makes a discount unreachable with nothing going red anywhere. It is semantic and hard, and it describes the failures nobody reports.
How to fix it. For each path, name the field that would look different if it had worked, and assert on it. If there is no such field, that is the defect.
Source. Standing check: if this silently did nothing, what would look different?; root-cause records, August 2026
Is this rule worth checking?
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