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ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: ZENODO
ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
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Non-Blocking Governance: Escrow-Based Asynchronous Authorization for Human-Mediated Agent Oversight

Authors: Fernandez, Marcelo Patricio;

Non-Blocking Governance: Escrow-Based Asynchronous Authorization for Human-Mediated Agent Oversight

Abstract

The P9 MCP Governance Proxy establishes that safety can be enforced protocol-transparently for any MCP-compatible agent — but at a cost: when a tool call triggers a governance HALT, the suspended tool call blocks until a human returns a signed Accountability Proof Block (APB). This design sacrifices liveness for safety under inevitable human response delays. We resolve this tension by introducing escrow-based non-blocking governance. Non-blocking refers to continued agent progress: the suspended tool call remains in escrow while the agent session continues. When a risky tool call triggers a HALT, its state is serialised into a persistent escrow entry and deposited in a priority queue rather than blocking the agent pipeline. We formalise three results: T10.1 (Non-Blocking Soundness) — no risky tool call executes without a valid APB satisfying predicates V1–V6, with at-most-once execution semantics; T10.2 (Timeout Consistency) — fallback decisions are locally equivalent to explicit governance decisions; T10.3 (Escrow Liveness) — the first liveness theorem in the series, establishing that if the human signs within the timeout window, the suspended call resumes with bounded latency. Six experiments validate the construction: P10 achieves up to 81× higher throughput than P9's blocking model at 80% halt rate; escrow overhead is negligible at P95 = 6.4 µs. Paper 10 of the Agent Governance Series.

Keywords

LLM agents, agent governance, human oversight, non-blocking, escrow, asynchronous authorization, liveness, safety, MCP, accountability proof block, AI safety, runtime verification

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average