PAT-0120 - Missing Authority
A structural condition where a region, action, state, or decision path exists without a declared governing authority.
Primary Lenses
- LEN-0110 - Authority Overlay Lens
Maps declared authority hierarchies onto observed structure to detect absence, override, or conflict.
- LEN-0100 - Absence Lens
Detects structurally required elements that are missing from the observed structure.
Secondary Lenses
- LEN-0150 - Conflict Lens
Detects mutually incompatible constraints, claims, states, or declarations that cannot be simultaneously satisfied.
- LEN-0270 - Reconciliation Lens
Evaluates whether structural changes align with declared authority updates, version changes, or reconciliation rules.
Primary Issue Matches
- 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.
- Automation Skips Required Approval
An automated AI or workflow step proceeds past an approval gate that should have been required before action.
- Fallback Authority Is Missing
The system does not declare who or what has authority when the primary owner, rule, tool, source, or decision path is unavailable or inconclusive.
- No Owner for Agent Action
An agent action can affect the system without a declared responsible owner, authority, or accountable decision path.
- Tool Can Act Without Responsible Authority
A tool, connector, function, or integration can perform an action without a declared responsible authority for that action.
- Workflow Step Has No Decision Owner
A workflow step requires a decision, approval, judgment, or routing choice, but no owner is declared for making it.
Supporting Issue Matches
- 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 Cannot Choose Tool Without Tool Result
The agent needs a tool result to choose the right tool, but cannot obtain that result without choosing a tool first.
- Agent Permission Expands Over Steps
An agent begins with limited permission but gains, assumes, or exercises broader authority as the workflow continues.
- Approval Depends on Output That Needs Approval
A required approval depends on an AI output or workflow result that itself cannot be produced or trusted until approval is granted.
- Cannot Identify Authoritative State
The user or workflow cannot tell which state, version, review result, decision, source, or output is currently authoritative.
- 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.
- Missing Fallback for Unavailable Information
The task does not declare what the AI should do when required information, sources, tools, fields, or evidence are unavailable.
- Model Output Triggers Unapproved Action
AI output causes, recommends, or triggers an action that has not passed the required approval, permission, or authority check.
- 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.
- Severity Increases Without New Evidence
The severity, risk, confidence, or escalation level increases even though no new evidence has been added.
- Single Step Carries Too Many Decisions
One prompt, workflow step, review stage, or agent action carries too many decisions for the system or user to evaluate cleanly.
Ontology Metadata
- Code
PAT-0120- Version
PAT-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 Pattern ontology entry: Missing Authority.
Receipt impact: None