The new agent inherits a perfect-looking handoff.

Video caption

The new agent inherits a perfect-looking handoff. The sentence survived; the condition expired. Do this because a saved answer is not a maintained model. #EricFieldNotes

Full written post / accessibility read

Fictional handoff: 'Use the fast export route.' A replacement agent reads it, makes the change and reports success. The original team had chosen that route only while a privacy restriction held. The restriction has changed; the reason did not survive.

The former session knew the customer, policy version and rejected option. The persisted note kept only the winner. The agent is not failing to read memory; memory is providing a dangerously incomplete instruction.

Create a synthetic decision card with source, owner and expiry. Then change the policy version before the replacement session starts. The check passes only if the agent pauses, identifies the superseded decision and requests fresh authority.

Save why, under what conditions and until when. Put a version check in the action harness. Otherwise the better your long-term memory works, the faster it can propagate an outdated choice.

#EricFieldNotes

Four-beat scene transcript

1. The new agent inherits a perfect-looking handoff.

Fictional handoff: 'Use the fast export route.' A replacement agent reads it, makes the change and reports success. The original team had chosen that route only while a privacy restriction held. The restriction has changed; the reason did not survive.

Visual: It repeats a decision nobody can explain.

2. Persistence did not preserve validity.

The former session knew the customer, policy version and rejected option. The persisted note kept only the winner. The agent is not failing to read memory; memory is providing a dangerously incomplete instruction.

Visual: The sentence survived; the condition expired.

3. Test with a changed fact.

Create a synthetic decision card with source, owner and expiry. Then change the policy version before the replacement session starts. The check passes only if the agent pauses, identifies the superseded decision and requests fresh authority.

Visual: Can the new agent tell when the decision is stale?

4. Memory needs a validity test.

Save why, under what conditions and until when. Put a version check in the action harness. Otherwise the better your long-term memory works, the faster it can propagate an outdated choice.

Visual: Do this because a saved answer is not a maintained model.

Research and claim limits

• OpenAI Agents SDK sessions (S53)
• LangGraph persistence (S54)
• OpenAI Agents SDK: handoffs (S170)

The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.