Why AI Agent 'Completed' Status Does Not Mean the Outcome Has Succeeded
When an AI coding agent marks its execution as COMPLETED, that state only describes what happened to the runtime process — not whether the intended real-world outcome was achieved. A pull request generated at 10:00, for example, may not be merged until 10:17, after tests pass and a human reviewer approves it. The core architectural problem is that execution state and outcome evidence operate on separate, independent timelines. Treating a COMPLETED status as proof of success can create misleading data models, especially when confirming evidence must arrive from an external system after the execution has already ended. A more accurate approach separates execution state from outcome state, explicitly allowing for an UNKNOWN outcome until sufficient evidence is received.
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