VERIFICATION FRICTION DESTROYS APPROVED WORK

01/01/2026 // SEVERITY: CRITICAL // TARGET: Series A agent company (public repo)

Situation

A high-velocity team uses PR approvals and automation assistance to move quickly.

Finding

An approved pull request accrued drift, automation failed to resolve conflicts, and the work was closed unmerged.

Impact

Significant engineering effort was lost after review, indicating verification load exceeded available bandwidth.

Remediation

Introduce an immutable verification protocol and a defined intervention path when automation fails.