Agent Residue Evidence

Agent Residue Evidence (ARE) adds an evidence checkpoint to an Agent's test and build workflow:

observe → Agent reviews evidence → user authorizes cleanup
        → Agent cleans with its own tools → ARE verifies

ARE shows task-scoped files, directories, attributed processes, and their listening ports. It never deletes files, stops processes, closes ports, decides that something is safe to delete, scans the full machine, uploads data, uses the network, or collects telemetry.

Visit the project site, run the reproducible task-residue demo, or download the latest verified release.

Standard task

Before the first test or build, the Agent calls begin_task_observation with the exact workspace and any task-owned temporary roots. Events are optional; safe generic events or empty heartbeats can be sent with append_task_events. Before its final answer, the Agent calls end_task_observation, explains the candidates, and asks the user what to do. Only after explicit authorization does the Agent clean with its normal tools. It then calls verify_task_residue to recheck the same stable candidates.

NO_CANDIDATES_OBSERVED means only that no candidate appeared inside the declared observation scope. It is not a host-wide cleanliness claim.

Completed task without a baseline

inspect_completed_task accepts explicit roots and a bounded time window. The result is always PARTIAL_EVIDENCE; it can use Event, receipt, inferred, or unattributed evidence, but never claims BASELINE_OBSERVED. Use get_residue_report to read a saved report without observing again.

Every observation is isolated by an opaque owner capability. Task IDs, report IDs, observation IDs, and candidate IDs are display references only and never authorize access. State is encrypted at rest with opaque filenames; exact paths are revealed only through an authorized candidate-resolution call. Short-lived executor capabilities can append only explicitly allowed event types and root aliases and cannot read, end, verify, or resolve a task.

The MCP surface contains exactly eight tools:

• begin_task_observation
• append_task_events
• end_task_observation
• inspect_completed_task
• get_residue_report
• verify_task_residue
• delegate_task_executor
• resolve_residue_candidate

There is deliberately no cleanup, delete, execute, terminate, or close tool.

Local-first packaging

One release contains a native CLI/stdio MCP server, thin Agent Plugin, MCPB, checksums, provenance, and SPDX SBOM. See Quickstart and Install. Runtime operation is fully local and offline. Reports default to seven-day retention and a 100 MB total cap; retained reports and active baselines are protected. Uninstall never silently deletes reports.

The current release is published in the official MCP Registry as io.github.fantasyce/agent-residue-evidence.

Native acceptance covers macOS 14+ arm64, Linux amd64, and Windows 11 amd64 through mandatory native CI jobs. Cross-compilation alone is not reported as native acceptance.

Agent Reliability Toolkit

ARE is one independent part of a small, local-first reliability toolkit:

• Agent Recall Trail keeps private Agent memory separate from reviewed shared knowledge.
• Agent Runtime Proof verifies that a live Agent or MCP runtime matches the artifact you approved.
• Agent Residue Evidence records task-scoped files, processes, and listening ports left by tests and builds.

Each project remains separately installable and keeps its own trust boundary.

Community feedback

Real Agent-host evaluations are especially useful. Share a synthetic or redacted workflow in the design-partner issue, including the host and ARE version, declared observation scope, and observed result. DSH users can also join the official community discussion. Do not post credentials, private paths, raw command lines, environment values, proprietary code, or full transcripts.

Development

Go 1.26 or 1.27 is required.

bash scripts/check.sh
bash scripts/run_native_acceptance.sh

Apache-2.0 licensed. See Security, Contributing, and native acceptance.