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Sprint projectOct 26, 2026

Auditing the Evidence Chain for LLM-Agent Collusion

Katelyn Cook, Shuhao Yao, Ozge Tepeli

Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Collusion monitors can mistake collusive language or parallel actions for an established agreement, while also confusing selected actions with successful execution. We audit the evidence chain from communication delivery through action selection, environment execution, and market outcomes. Source inspection of candidate starter paths identifies cases where stored messages are not delivered to peers or actions follow scripted policies. We then audit three complete historical double-auction runs, covering ninety rounds and 450 seller decisions, using separate willingness and participation judges repeated three times. A concrete counterexample shows a communicated collective-withdrawal plan followed by selected requests that the environment does not execute. To connect this audit to a frozen statistical pipeline, we construct sixteen additional focal cases from distinct historical runs, fix provisional source-based references before scoring, calibrate on eight cases, commit the thresholds, and evaluate the other eight. The audit-based rule detects 2 of 2 provisional positives with 1 of 6 negative cases flagged, versus 2 of 6 for an ordinary direct judge with the same positive detection. These small-sample results are conditional on AI-assisted references awaiting independent human validation. The contribution is an inspectable evidence audit and an integrated evaluation pilot, not a general claim of detector superiority or newly established causal harm.

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Cite this project

@misc{cook2026auditing,
  title = {{Auditing the Evidence Chain for LLM-Agent Collusion}},
  author = {Katelyn Cook and Shuhao Yao and Ozge Tepeli},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/auditing-the-evidence-chain-for-llmagent-collusion-r7i1}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/auditing-the-evidence-chain-for-llmagent-collusion-r7i1}
}

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