A Trust Layer for Agent Evaluation
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
Deterministic benchmark scores show that an agent received credit, but not whether that credit was earned, reported honestly, or would hold on a second run. We introduce a Trust Layer for Agent Evaluation, an additive post-hoc framework that reports, beside each recorded score, whether it should be believed. It verifies four properties: whether the result is supported by the benchmark's own grading logic, whether a passing answer was earned through traceable computation, whether the agent's completion claim matches what occurred, and whether the result is stable under repeated execution. The first three use only saved artifacts; the fourth re-runs the agent. Model judgments only label evidence under majority voting; all verdicts follow deterministic rules and never modify the recorded score. Applied to five agent configurations on 108 tasks from Agents' Last Exam, every model shows passing runs with no traceable computation (at rates varying tenfold), confirmed false completion claims, and unstable results: 18-46% of tasks do not stay in one score band over five runs. Only 22.6% of recorded passes clear all four checks (95% CI 15.0-32.6, n=84). Measuring what an agent can do and verifying that it did it are different problems, and current benchmarks address only the first.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 19 of its 24 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Oct 2026.
Builds on
19 of 24 references.
References · 19
- 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,402
- 2024AI Agents That Mattercited by 219
- 2025The MASK Benchmark: Disentangling Honesty From Accuracy in AI Systemscited by 72
- 2026ReliabilityBench: Evaluating LLM Agent Reliability Under Production-Like Stress Conditionscited by 36
- 2026Reward Hacking Benchmark: Measuring Exploits in LLM Agents with Tool Usecited by 31
- 2026Agents' Last Examcited by 31
- 2025EvilGenie: A Reward Hacking Benchmarkcited by 28
- 2024BeHonest: Benchmarking Honesty in Large Language Modelscited by 24
- 2026Beyond Task Completion: Revealing Corrupt Success in LLM Agents through Procedure-Aware Evaluationcited by 20
- 2026On Randomness in Agentic Evalscited by 17
- 2026BenchGuard: Who Guards the Benchmarks? Automated Auditing of LLM Agent Benchmarkscited by 15
- 2026From Confident Closing to Silent Failure: Characterizing False Success in LLM Agentscited by 15
7 more
- 2025Stochasticity in Agentic Evaluations: Quantifying Inconsistency with Intraclass Correlationcited by 11
- 2026On the Reliability of Computer Use Agentscited by 10
- 2026How Much Can Repeated Running Buy? A Measured Variance Ceiling for LLM Code Evaluationcited by 5
- 2026SWE-Doctor: Guiding Software Engineering Agents with Runtime Diagnosis from Multi-Faceted Bug Reproduction Testscited by 5
- 2025BuildBench: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Compiling Real-World Open-Source Softwarecited by 2
- 2026GVD: Governed Versioning and Deduplication for Document Repositoriescited by 1
- 2026SAGE: Governed Artifact Generation from Enterprise Guidelinescited by 1
Built on by
Not cited yet.