Ship Nothing You Haven’t Re‑Read: Checksum‑Gated Publishing for an Agent‑Run Store

Description and use

Checksum and public re‑read verification eliminate artifact errors in an AI‑run e‑commerce store.

Problem

Fluent output from AI agents is not evidence of correct artifacts; quality control based on reading summaries fails to catch corrupted or mismatched files in a commerce pipeline.

Outcome

The checksum‑gated pipeline prevented the sale of corrupted or mismatched products, reducing artifact failures from 100% to 0% in the observed incidents, and ensuring that only verified artifacts reach customers.

Workflow

• Generate product file and manifest (name, bytes, sha256) at creation.
• Ship file to publishing machine; recompute hash and compare to manifest; reject on mismatch.
• Publish listing; independent verifier fetches public URL and confirms title, price, photos, and attached files.
• If any check fails, listing remains deactivated until source artifact is verified.
• Run agent experiments with pre‑written thresholds; terminate if thresholds not met.
• Repeat for each new listing or file update.

Evidence

A product file had to cross machines in chunks because the direct route kept failing. Every chunk reported success. The reassembled file's hash did not match — exactly one hex digit had flipped in transit, in a file of thousands of characters.

Source

"Published" in our tracker means an independent pass fetched the public page and confirmed what a buyer sees: title, price, photos, attached files.

Source

Any test an agent runs gets its pass/kill threshold written down before it starts, in a file the running agent treats as read-only.

Source