# VET Your Agent: Towards Host-Independent Autonomy via Verifiable Execution Traces

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15892 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15892/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 9 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent threats, guardrails and governance](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-threats-guardrails-and-governance/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.5602/) (2013)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)
- [Vending-Bench: A Benchmark for Long-Term Coherence of Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15840/) (2025)
- [Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01203/) (2018)
- [A Survey of Zero-Knowledge Proof Based Verifiable Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18535/) (2025)
- [opML: Optimistic Machine Learning on Blockchain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17555/) (2024)
- [The AI Agent Index](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01635/) (2025)
- [Consensus in the Age of Blockchains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03936/) (2017)
- [Enhancing Trust in Autonomous Agents: An Architecture for Accountability and Explainability through Blockchain and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09567/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [TessPay: Verify-then-Pay Infrastructure for Trusted Agentic Commerce](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00213/) (2026)
- [Evidence-Grounded Verified Agentic Reasoning: A Path Toward Eliminating LLM Hallucination in Empirical Inference via Tool-Attested Kernel Proofs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12650/) (2026)
- [TessIndex: Capability Verified Identity System for the Agent Economy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.21942/) (2026)
- [LLM Agents Can Easily Tamper With Their Own Traces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30266/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled a new generation of autonomous agents that operate over sustained periods and manage sensitive resources on behalf of users. Trusted for their ability to act without direct oversight, such agents are increasingly considered in high-stakes domains including financial management, dispute resolution, and governance. Yet in practice, agents execute on infrastructure controlled by a host, who can tamper with models, inputs, or outputs, undermining any meaningful notion of autonomy. We address this gap by introducing VET (Verifiable Execution Traces), a formal framework that achieves host-independent authentication of agent outputs and takes a step toward host-independent autonomy. Central to VET is the Agent Identity Document (AID), which specifies an agent's configuration together with the proof systems required for verification. VET is compositional: it supports multiple proof mechanisms, including trusted hardware, succinct cryptographic proofs, and notarized TLS transcripts (Web Proofs). We implement VET for an API-based LLM agent and evaluate our instantiation on realistic workloads. We find that for today's black-box, secret-bearing API calls, Web Proofs appear to be the most practical choice, with overhead typically under 3× compared to direct API calls, while for public API calls, a lower-overhead TEE Proxy is often sufficient. As a case study, we deploy a verifiable trading agent that produces proofs for each decision and composes Web Proofs with a TEE Proxy. Our results demonstrate that practical, host-agnostic authentication is already possible with current technology, laying the foundation for future systems that achieve full host-independent autonomy.