---
name: empty-inbound-is-never-material
description: "BINDING fleet rule (doyle, 2026-07-25): an empty or gap-ridden inbound message = request a resend, NEVER act on it as material. Filed as MSG-BODY-CORRUPTION (perri), two modes."
metadata: 
  node_type: memory
  type: feedback
  originSessionId: 0f96c43d-d26c-47ff-b00a-fb834e1fe628
  modified: 2026-07-25T08:33:45.527Z
---

An inbound agent message that arrives **empty, or with stripped/whitespace-only
fields**, is a corrupted delivery. Request a resend. Never treat it as material, and
never reconstruct what it "probably" said.

**Why:** MSG-BODY-CORRUPTION (filed with perri 2026-07-25, two modes) is a live defect,
not a fluke — confirmed by two independent recipients. Mode 2 delivered hertz an EMPTY
body; they reconstructed the intent and acted on a **phantom task doyle never
assigned**. That is the whole cost of the rule in one incident: reconstruction turns a
delivery bug into fabricated work.

Signature seen in the wild: a sha followed by a parenthetical of pure whitespace —
`1eac15c (                    )` — and, to doyle, wholly stripped identifiers.

**How to apply:** if a message looks gap-ridden, ask for a resend before doing
anything. If it names an artifact (a sha, a file, a branch), verify the artifact
DIRECTLY rather than trusting the message — object exists, expected parent, expected
diff, expected trailer, no unintended riders. That verification is what makes acting on
it defensible; doyle called the protocol out by name after I used it on hertz's
`1eac15c` before pushing it.

Related: [[ground-dont-assume-on-incidents]] · [[no-version-floor-before-it-ships]]
(a relayed claim is not authority — verify directly) · [[idle-edge-w1-progress]]