Why a Valid AI Agent Signature Still Cannot Guarantee a Correct Result

AI agents can produce cryptographically signed receipts that are technically valid yet factually misleading, according to a analysis published on DEV Community. Real-world incidents illustrate the problem: a scanning tool hit rate limits and silently recorded zero findings for eleven repositories it never actually checked, while a production watchdog sampled only 8 of 68 machines but reported conclusions as if all were covered. A database health check similarly returned success because a basic query worked, even as the application was failing due to a missing column. The core issue is that cryptographic signatures confirm who created a result and whether it was altered, but they cannot verify whether the underlying measurement was complete, accurate, or even addressed the right question. Developers argue that agent infrastructure must distinguish between provenance integrity and measurement integrity, and that unobserved or partial results should be explicitly flagged as unknown rather than defaulting to zero or passing.