Trustworthy Execution of Industrial Agents

Abstract

Industrial agents increasingly modify persistent engineering objects rather than merely generate answers. Authentication and successful calls cannot establish whether intended changes occurred, evidence supports a conclusion, or historical results remain applicable. We present a framework for trustworthy industrial-agent execution within a single enterprise governance domain. Eight control domains assign responsibilities across authority, planning, composition, tool execution, actual effects, evidence, baseline and use governance, and recovery and evolution. A four-plane architecture and three control chains connect these responsibilities through typed objects and version-bound interfaces. The specification separates tool returns from actual engineering effects, evidence coverage from engineering judgment, and historical lifecycle state from current applicability. Multi-agent handoffs are an architectural extension examined through deterministic interface tests. Distinct prototypes examine selected mechanisms using conformance tests, ablations, uncertainty stress, CAD/CAE execution, and local persistence. An OpenFOAM fixture produces COMPLETE coverage with FAIL judgment; an expired-job case requires readmission despite completed computation. CAD and recovery counterexamples expose omitted mandatory checks, discarded negative facts, and inconsistent producer-consumer mappings. Targeted repairs support local regression conclusions. The reported 0/29 hazardous commits measure closed-set specification conformance, not a safety probability. We distinguish the complete framework, implemented paths, and empirical evidence, identifying check-inventory completeness and cross-module fact preservation as prerequisites for extending these results.