SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE

Influence Is Not Authority: When Causal Guardrail Signals Make Legitimate Tool Use Look Like an Attack in Tool-Using LLM Agents

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Aug 30, 2026 · UTC

The key limitation of current state-of-the-art influence-based guardrails is that they do not reliably distinguish a legitimate, user-authorized action from a malicious, unauthorized action when both rely on external tool information. This ambiguity can cause benign actions to trigger unnecessary verification and intervention, reducing utility and adding latency. We expose this limitation through an authorization-equivalence audit of 96 conditions derived from 24 base cases. Within matched source comparisons, we hold authorization, the exact committed action, and its intended effect fixed, cha

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