agent-architecture-audit

Agent Architecture Audit

A diagnostic workflow for agent systems that hide failures behind wrapper layers, stale memory, retry loops, or transport/rendering mutations.

When to Activate

MANDATORY for:

• Releasing any agent or LLM-powered application to production
• Shipping features with tool calling, memory, or multi-step workflows
• Agent behavior degrades after adding wrapper layers
• User reports "the agent is getting worse" or "tools are flaky"
• Same model works in playground but breaks inside your wrapper
• Debugging agent behavior for more than 15 minutes without finding root cause

Especially critical when:

• You've added new prompt layers, tool definitions, or memory systems
• Different agents in your system behave inconsistently
• The model was fine yesterday but is hallucinating today
• You suspect hidden repair/retry loops silently mutating responses

Do not use for:

• General code debugging — use agent-introspection-debugging
• Code review — use language-specific reviewer agents
• Security scanning — use security-review or security-review/scan
• Agent performance benchmarking — use agent-eval
• Writing new features — use the appropriate workflow skill

The 12-Layer Stack

Every agent system has these layers. Any of them can corrupt the answer:

#	Layer	What Goes Wrong
1	System prompt	Conflicting instructions, instruction bloat
2	Session history	Stale context injection from previous turns

Common Failure Patterns

1. Wrapper Regression

2. Memory Contamination

3. Tool Discipline Failure

4. Rendering/Transport Corruption

5. Hidden Agent Layers

Audit Workflow

Phase 1: Scope

Phase 2: Evidence Collection

Tool requirements expressed only in prompt text (not code)

Tool execution without validation