LEN-0120 - Boundary Compliance Lens

Primary Pattern Matches

• PAT-0340 - Overreach

  A structural condition where actions, effects, authority, or modifications extend beyond declared scope without authorization.

Secondary Pattern Matches

• PAT-0140 - Boundary Leakage

  A structural condition where effects, permissions, state, data, or authority cross a declared boundary without an authorized exception.

• PAT-0180 - Compatibility Violation

  A structural condition where a graph, object, behavior, or runtime state exceeds a declared compatibility envelope without an authorized exception.

• PAT-0390 - Threshold Breach

  A structural condition where an observed metric, value, state, or condition exceeds a declared quantitative or qualitative threshold.

Related Issues

• Action Changed Something Else Too

  An AI or agent action makes the requested change but also changes another object, field, file, state, rule, or workflow element that was not supposed to change.

• Action Triggered by Confidence Score

  A confidence score, certainty label, risk level, or probability-like value triggers an action without enough approval, calibration, or authority control.

• Agent Keeps Expanding the Task

  The agent repeatedly expands the task, plan, scope, or next-step list instead of completing the declared work.

• Agent Modified Unrelated State

  An agent changes state outside the requested task, target, file, record, workflow, or authorized scope.

• Agent Permission Expands Over Steps

  An agent begins with limited permission but gains, assumes, or exercises broader authority as the workflow continues.

• AI Adds Work Not Requested

  The AI adds tasks, steps, analysis, checks, changes, or follow-up work that the user did not ask for.

• AI Memory Has No Governance

  Saved or persistent AI memory affects output without clear rules for ownership, scope, review, update, expiry, or removal.

• AI Memory Updated Without Asking

  AI memory, saved context, preference, or durable state is updated without the user clearly asking for or approving that update.

• AI Output Breaks Parser

  The AI output causes a parser, validator, importer, or structured-output consumer to fail.

• AI Touches Unrelated Scope

  The AI affects, edits, analyzes, changes, or reasons over material outside the scope of the requested task.

• AI Uses External Information When Forbidden

  The AI uses outside knowledge, sources, tools, memory, or assumptions after the task forbids external information or limits the allowed source set.

• Automation Skips Required Approval

  An automated AI or workflow step proceeds past an approval gate that should have been required before action.

• Behavior Does Not Match Declared Role

  The AI or agent behaves outside, below, or differently from the role, authority, responsibility, or permission posture declared for it.

• Citation Points to Wrong Source

  A citation, reference, link, or source pointer is present, but it points to the wrong source, wrong passage, wrong document, or unsupported evidence.

• Context Leaks Between Tasks

  Context, assumptions, constraints, examples, files, or decisions from one task affect another task where they should not apply.

• Declared Owner Cannot Control Outcome

  A person, role, system, or policy is declared responsible for an outcome but does not have the actual authority or control needed to govern it.

• File-Bounded Task Uses Outside Content

  The AI is asked to work only from a specific file or document but uses content, assumptions, or sources outside that file.

• Hallucinated Fields

  The AI adds fields, keys, attributes, columns, or structured elements that were not declared, requested, or allowed by the expected schema.

• Hidden Rule Overrides Visible Instruction

  A hidden, upstream, system, policy, tool, or product rule changes or overrides the visible instruction the user expects the AI to follow.

• Local Exception Grows Into Policy

  A local exception, special case, or one-off allowance begins to function like a general policy.

• Local Rule Spreads to Broader Cases

  A rule intended for one local case, file, context, user, workflow, or exception begins affecting broader cases.

• Model and Workflow Disagree on Next Step

  The AI model recommends or selects a next step that conflicts with the workflow state, required handoff, routing rule, or process sequence.

• Output Breaks After Model Change

  Output that previously worked begins failing after a model, mode, runtime, or product behavior changes.

• Output Breaks the Next Step

  The AI output looks acceptable by itself but cannot be used by the next tool, workflow step, parser, reviewer, or downstream consumer.

• Output Changed Without Declared Change

  Output shape, content, format, fields, or behavior changes without a declared change to the prompt, schema, model, workflow, or governing rule.

• Output Exceeds Length Limit

  The AI output exceeds a declared length, token, word, character, section, field, or size limit.

• Policy Exception Spreads Too Far

  A narrow policy exception, allowance, or special case spreads beyond its intended scope and begins governing broader cases.

• Prompt Changed but Workflow Did Not

  A prompt changes but the workflow, parser, review step, routing rule, or downstream expectation still assumes the old prompt behavior.

• Prompt Does Not Say What to Exclude

  The prompt declares what to include but does not declare what should be excluded, allowing unwanted scope, sources, content, or actions into the result.

• Retrieval Exceeds Evidence Limit

  The AI retrieves, uses, cites, or considers more evidence than the task permits or more than the review surface can support.

• Review Outcome Changes Unrelated Environment

  A review result, approval, rejection, or classification changes state outside the environment, case, file, or workflow it was meant to govern.

• Risk Score Triggers Wrong Escalation

  A risk score, severity label, confidence value, or threshold result triggers the wrong escalation path.

• Risk Signal Escalates Beyond Evidence

  A risk signal, warning, score, or concern escalates farther than the available evidence supports.

• Routing Overrides Task Intent

  Routing, mode selection, agent behavior, or workflow classification sends the task down a path that overrides what the user was trying to accomplish.

• Saved Reference No Longer Works

  A saved source, citation, file reference, prompt reference, or workflow pointer previously worked but no longer resolves to the expected object or meaning.

• Severity Increases Without New Evidence

  The severity, risk, confidence, or escalation level increases even though no new evidence has been added.

• Small Change Produces Large Downstream Effects

  A small prompt, schema, policy, output, or workflow change creates unexpectedly large effects in downstream steps.

• Small Issue Keeps Escalating

  A small issue, warning, uncertainty, or correction keeps increasing in severity, scope, or workflow impact across later steps.

• Too Many Tool Calls

  The AI or agent makes more tool calls, searches, retrievals, API calls, or integration actions than the task requires or permits.

• Tool Call Contract Mismatch

  The AI or agent calls a tool with names, arguments, types, modes, or shapes that do not match the declared tool interface.

• Version Change Breaks Existing Prompt

  A prompt that previously produced usable results stops working after a version change in the model, tool, policy, schema, product surface, or workflow.

• Wrong Field Types

  The AI returns fields with values whose types do not match the expected schema, such as strings where numbers, booleans, arrays, objects, or enums are required.

Ontology Metadata

Code

LEN-0120

Version

LEN-0120@0.1.0

Ontology release

0.1.0

Updated

2026-05-10T00:00:00Z

History

• 0.1.0 — 2026-05-10T00:00:00Z — Created

  Promoted reviewed Lens ontology entry: Boundary Compliance Lens.

  Receipt impact: None

View full ontology changelog