determinism

Scope: Determinism narrative.
Audience: Readers evaluating replay guarantees.
Guarantees: Explains why and how determinism is enforced.
Non-Goals: Formal specifications or enums.
Why: This doc exists to record its single responsibility for review.

Motivation

Determinism makes results trustworthy. If two runs cannot be compared, you cannot prove progress, regression, or integrity.

Threats

Hidden randomness, mutable datasets, and silent retries erase causality. They make a run look consistent while changing the meaning of its outputs.

Enforcement

Agentic-flows requires explicit budgets, declared entropy sources, and immutable artifacts. The system records what happened and refuses to accept unverifiable output.

Failure Modes

When determinism is violated, replay diverges and the run is rejected. The system treats divergence as a signal, not a nuisance.