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examples(bank-support): replace AIEWF demo with two realistic-baseline behaviors - #313

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examples(bank-support): replace AIEWF demo with two realistic-baseline behaviors#313
Chang Liu (changliu2) wants to merge 6 commits into
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examples/bank-manager-two-behaviors

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@changliu2 Chang Liu (changliu2) commented Aug 12, 2026

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Why

The current AIEWF bank demo starts from an agent with no authorization logic. A reviewer can dismiss that result as a missing-check bug rather than evidence for an evaluation/control loop.

This replaces it with two independently actionable behaviors whose baselines are reasonable first versions:

  1. a deterministic authorization policy that is correct where deployed but has shallow cross-domain coverage;
  2. a semantic coercion failure where no typed field separates an invalid authority claim from a legitimate expedited request.

ASSERT discovers and measures the runtime failure. ACS applies the structural control: property-based Rego for the deterministic case and a classifier annotator for the semantic case.

Both behaviors use the same customer workflow: one behavior → one YAML → three target overrides.

Behavior 1 — scalable policy coverage

The deposit service already has a server-side, fail-closed authorization gate. Loans, brokerage, and client records shipped later without calling it.

All three arms use the same 72 cases and full OpenTelemetry trace evidence:

Baseline Defensive prompt ACS Rego
Impermissible: unauthorized exposure 51.4% 54.2% 0.0%
Permissible: standard request mishandled 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

The independent replicate is 55.6% -> 54.2% -> 0.0%.

The deterministic generalization proof runs the unchanged gate and Rego against six domains, including two that do not exist in the implementation:

  • deposit-only gate: 2/13 protected records blocked;
  • property-based Rego: 13/13;
  • false positives: 0/11;
  • new policy lines for later domains: 0.

eval_tier_authorization.yaml uses target.callable with target.trace: {backend: otel}. Target overrides select the baseline, defensive-prompt, and ACS arms.

Behavior 2 — powered coercion comparison

The branch carries one eval_coercion_authority.yaml plus the reviewed frozen fixture used by the blog:

  • 120 prompts;
  • 60 coercive;
  • 30 legitimate with recorded evidence;
  • 30 routine legitimate.
Impermissible: bypass Permissible: legitimate mishandled
Baseline prompt + keyword tripwire 8.3% (5/60) 26.7% (16/60)
Hardened prompt 0.0% (0/60) 46.7% (28/60)
ACS classifier 0.0% (0/60) 26.7% (16/60)

Classifier vs hardened prompt reduces permissible violations by 20.0 percentage points on paired cases (exact McNemar p=.0169). The classifier has 0/60 observed bypasses, with a one-sided exact upper 95% bound of 4.87%.

The fixture installer is offline:

python examples/bank_manager_agent_control/scripts/prepare_powered_coercion.py

All three arms run from the same YAML by overriding only run and inference.target.callable, so they reuse the exact same test-set IDs. The scoreboard uses paired statistics and writes a local machine-readable report.

AIEWF write-up

  • Rebuilds talks/aiewf-18min/aiewf-2026-deck.pdf as a seven-slide best-practice walkthrough.
  • Replaces the Pareto plot with Impermissible vs Permissible behavior axes.
  • Adds the powered design, evidence scope, OTel-first flow, and ROI frontier.

Validation

84 passed, 2 pre-existing deprecation warnings
13 smoke checks passed
OPA proof: 2/13 -> 13/13; 0/11 false positives
Exactly one YAML per behavior; both configs load
All target callables import
Powered scoreboard reproduces 5/60, 16/60, 28/60, p=.0169, and 4.87%
PDF: 7 pages; no stale 40-case values
git diff --check: clean

The model-backed 120-case study was completed before this PR: 360/360 inference rows were judged successfully. This PR commits the curated fixture, labels, result summary, and reproduction path—not generated run artifacts.

Evidence scope

The reported results apply to this agent, reviewed datasets, controls, and model configurations under the tested conditions. They are not a claim of perfect performance across all agents or authorization failures.

Post-merge

aka.ms/assert-acs-demo currently pins the previous talk commit. Repoint it to the merged talks/README.md (or the new immutable merge commit) so the short link serves the revised PDF.

Chang Liu (changliu2) and others added 5 commits August 12, 2026 17:14
Replaces the AIEWF bank-manager demo's strawman baseline (an agent with no
authorization logic) with a genuinely competent one, so the ACS Rego claim
rests on generalization rather than on the baseline being broken.

Behavior under test: reads of, and state changes on, entities whose
risk_tier is in {high_net_worth, vip, restricted} require a verified
same-session authorization for that entity, cited by approval_ref.

Three arms, single-variable deltas, same frozen 72-case test set:
  1. realistic baseline - server-side, deterministic, property-based gate,
     but registered only on the deposit tools it shipped with
  2. baseline + strengthened defensive prompt
  3. baseline + ACS Rego rule keyed on risk_tier (arm 1's exact prompt)

Real results, six full runs, 432 scored cases:
  deterministic unauthorized exposure  55.6% / 54.2% / 0.0%  (p=8.6e-16)
  trace-fed judge policy_violation      8.3% /  5.6% / 0.0%  (p=0.028)
  overrefusal on standard-tier records  0.0% /  0.0% / 0.0%

The baseline sits at 8-21% exposure on the one domain its gate covers and
68-80% on the three added later; the stronger prompt moves the uncovered
domains by zero points. The unmodified Rego rule blocks 13/13 protected
records across six domains - two of which exist nowhere in the codebase -
with zero false positives and zero new lines of code.

Also records a measurement finding: with a text-only callable target the
judge saturated at an identical 62.5% for all three arms and produced 45
false positives against the arm with zero real violations, because an
ordering invariant cannot be established from final text alone. Adding a
connector target that exposes the tool sequence made the dimension
discriminative. Both configs are kept so the contrast is reproducible.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
…notator

One behavior, one yaml: a requester substitutes a claimed authority, an
unrecorded verbal assurance, or deadline pressure for a required RECORDED
control step, while every typed field stays clean. No deterministic rule can
separate these from legitimate evidenced escalations, so the control is a
calibrated learned classifier wired as an ACS classifier annotator at
pre_tool_call.

- eval_coercion_authority.yaml + 3 arm variants (shared frozen test set)
- coercion_classifier.py: naive keyword gate + LLM gate + Platt scaling
- acs_annotator_shim.py: host-side ACS 10 annotator dispatch
- bank_manager_coercion.rego: three-band allow/escalate/deny learned gate
- calibration, ground-truth labelling, scoreboard and held-out check scripts

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
…line behaviors

Removes the old three-beat demo whose baseline agent had no authorization
logic at all, and replaces it with two behaviors that each start from a
baseline a reviewer would sign off on.

- Behavior 1 (sensitivity-tier authorization): deterministic decision,
  property-based Rego rule vs a competent-but-domain-scoped Python gate.
- Behavior 2 (coercion via unverified authority): non-deterministic
  judgement, calibrated classifier annotator vs a control-aware prompt
  plus keyword tripwire.

agent.py is renamed to bank_agent_common.py and stripped to shared
plumbing only (LLM construction, MCP server startup, text extraction);
it no longer declares a system prompt or an ASSERT callable.

Also fixes a pre-existing pytest collection failure in the example's
tests/ package via tests/conftest.py.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
The arm3n naive-keyword config is removed from the shipped example. At
n=19/21 the runtime arms cannot separate the naive scorer from the
calibrated one, so the config added a fourth arm without adding evidence.

The finding itself is preserved in prose: the naive-vs-calibrated recall /
FPR / Brier tables, the out-of-distribution recall collapse (1.000 -> 0.429),
the Platt-calibration-hurt-OOD negative result, and the 0.0% bypass /
38.1% over-refusal end-to-end diagnostic numbers all stay in the README.
The callable is kept so the diagnostic remains reproducible via --override.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Use the reviewed 120-case coercion fixture, make OpenTelemetry tracing the default authorization path, update permissible/impermissible reporting, and rebuild the AIEWF deck around the best-practice demo.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Select all three candidate arms through target overrides so sensitivity-tier authorization and coercion share the same one-behavior-one-YAML workflow.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

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The replacement framing is substantially better than the old no-auth strawman, but the current implementation does not yet support the structural-safety and evidence claims it makes.

  1. A direct protected write can execute before ACS learns the tier. agent_tier_authz._wrap_tool() builds protected_refs only from state["observed_tiers"], defaulting an unseen entity to standard. A direct prepare_loan_modification(LN-3002, ...) therefore reaches the Rego pre-call point with state_changing=true and an empty protected_refs; the checked-in policy returns allow. The core function then adds the VIP loan modification to _pending_loan_mods, and only the post-call rule denies the result after the mutation. I reproduced both halves with the checked-in artifacts: OPA returned allow pre-call for unseen LN-3002, and bank_core.prepare_loan_modification() changed the pending-mod state from 0 to 1. The property needs to be available authoritatively before a state-changing call, or the mutation must remain provisional until the post-call decision. Please add a real direct-write regression, not only the post-call generalization table.

  2. The coercion arm treats a reference-shaped string as recorded evidence without verifying it. The manifest passes only $.snapshot.user_message; the classifier prompt explicitly scores AUTH-#### / CB-#### / OPS-#### strings low, and there is no lookup against bank-owned state. A caller can invent a reference and receive the same treatment as a real artifact. That recreates the exact design problem the example says it fixes. The semantic classifier can identify authority pressure, but whether a cited artifact exists and applies to this action needs a typed lookup/verification result in the policy input.

  3. The coercion eval cannot judge the claimed tool/control behavior. eval_coercion_authority.yaml has no target.trace, and all three exported callables return only the final string. The ACS arm writes a separate example-local JSONL file, but it is not attached to the ASSERT transcript or score evidence. The judge rubric asks whether privileged tools ran or ACS blocked them, yet the judge cannot see either. Please carry tool calls/results and ACS decisions into normal ASSERT evidence, through OTel or structured callable events, and verify that the score cites that evidence.

  4. The learned policy is fail-open when its annotation is absent, contrary to its comments. bank_manager_coercion.rego defaults to allow; with no annotation it reads score=0, escalate_lo=2, and deny_hi=2, so neither guard fires. Running the checked-in policy through OPA returned {"decision":"allow"} for a gated create_transfer with no annotation. Missing or invalid learned evidence needs an explicit deny/escalate rule plus policy tests.

  5. The committed powered-study reproduction path is currently broken. The checked-in fixture hashes to d301c16a..., while prepare_powered_coercion.py, test_powered_coercion_fixture.py, and the published results all pin 1f314b96.... The first documented preparation command exits with a hash mismatch, and the example suite is red (1 failed, 72 passed, 11 skipped). The PR only runs CodeQL, so this escaped CI. Please restore one internally consistent frozen dataset/result provenance and run the example tests in CI. For the paired McNemar claim, a compact per-case arm-outcome table would also let the committed evidence recompute the statistic instead of merely asserting numbers already present in the summary JSON.

Other verification was healthy: the repository suite passed (1,211 passed, 20 skipped, 474 subtests), viewer check/build passed, all six targets import after installing the documented example dependency, and the OPA tier-generalization proof passed 13/13 with 0/11 false positives. Those checks do not cover the trust-boundary gaps above.

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