The Rubber-Stamp Wraith
The empty space between "the agent handled it" and "someone checked."
The Rubber-Stamp Wraith haunts the empty space between "the agent handled it" and "someone checked." The approval log is immaculate. Every action has a timestamp and a reviewer; the reviewer accepted the agent's summary without opening the change. When a refund goes to the wrong customer, the team can prove that the process was followed. It cannot find the decision the process was meant to require.
Symptom
Approval logs are perfect and empty. Reviewers accept summaries, not changes. The process exists; the judgment does not. Every incident produces proof that oversight happened.
Why It Matters
Volume II described the Autonomy Mirage. The Wraith appears when a live workflow inherits that promise and nobody checks whether the reviewer can see or stop the action. Here the question is brutally concrete.
What the Chapter Gives You
How approval theater becomes approval evidence, the review design that makes checking cheaper than clicking, and the uncomfortable metric that reveals whether oversight is real.
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