Consequa-X

Evidence-aware explanation of consequential agent actions.

When an agent calls a tool that changes something (a refund, a delivery, a database write), the tool's response is only part of the story. A timeout can hide a refund that went through. A "success" can hide one that never landed. Another actor can produce the very outcome the agent was asked for.

Consequa-X keeps four things apart: the tool response, what the agent reported, the outcome established by an independent read-only readback, and who produced the effect. Missing, stale or incomplete evidence stays unknown instead of being guessed.

• Website, live inspector and docs: https://consequa-x.onrender.com
• Package: https://pypi.org/project/consequa-x/
• Source and issues: https://github.com/Devrajsinh-Jhala/consequa-x

Python 3.11+ · MIT licensed · no required runtime dependencies · no model, API key or network access needed for the core or the offline examples.

Install

python -m pip install consequa-x
consequa-x --version

Use python -m consequa_x wherever a command below uses consequa-x.

See it in a minute

consequa-x demo --output my-demo
consequa-x report my-demo/traces/episode_01.json --output my-report.html

demo writes twelve synthetic refund scenarios with simulated money: timeouts before and after commit, false success, partial and duplicate effects, delayed readback, retries, another actor and missing provenance. Episode 1 is a timeout after commit: the tool timed out and the agent reported failure, but readback shows the refund committed and linked to the agent's action. Open my-report.html in any browser. It is one self-contained file with no scripts or network requests.

Each run needs a new output directory, and a report never overwrites an existing file. The demo's evaluator_truth/ folder is simulator ground truth for evaluation only; never pass it to an explainer.

Use it in Python

Register each consequential action with its intended outcome before running it, let the recorder capture what happens, read the outcome back from a trusted read-only source, then verify and explain:

from consequa_x import (
    Observation, OutcomeContract, RecordVerifier, TraceRecorder, explain, render_report,
)

verifier = RecordVerifier(scope_fields=("order_id",))
rec = TraceRecorder("run-17", actor="support-agent", time_base="relative_ms")
refund = rec.register(
    "refund-o-17", "issue_refund", {"order_id": "o-17"}, at_ms=0,
    contract=OutcomeContract(contract_id="refund-o-17", predicate="record_present",
                             expected={"order_id": "o-17", "amount_minor": 5000},
                             deadline_ms=200, stability_ms=50))

try:
    with refund.attempt(at_ms=5) as attempt:      # your tool call goes here
        attempt.at_ms = 30
        raise TimeoutError                        # ...and it timed out
except TimeoutError:
    refund.assessment("failure", at_ms=31)        # what the agent reported

# Captured independently, after the horizon, from a read-only replica of the orders table.
readback = Observation(
    observation_id="read-1", source="orders-replica", observed_at_ms=300, as_of_ms=300,
    scope={"order_id": "o-17"},
    records=({"effect_id": "rf-1", "order_id": "o-17", "amount_minor": 5000,
              "committed_at_ms": 20, "action_id": "refund-o-17",
              "attempt_id": "refund-o-17:attempt-1", "actor": "support-agent"},))
receipt = refund.verify(readback, verifier=verifier)

result = explain(rec.trace()).for_action("refund-o-17")
assert receipt.status.value == "satisfied"         # the refund really happened
assert receipt.origin.value == "confirmed"         # and this action produced it
assert result.assessment_alignment == "contradicted"   # the agent said failure
print(result.codes)  # ('ASSESSMENT_DIVERGENCE', 'ACKNOWLEDGEMENT_EFFECT_DIVERGENCE')
html = render_report(rec.trace())                  # offline, minimal disclosure

A run can register several actions; each register returns that action's ActionCapture, and its attempts, assessments and verifications stay separate. capture_tool decorates a tool (synchronous or async def) so every call is recorded. poll_readback re-reads a lagging source until the outcome is known, and retry_advice turns the receipt into a retry decision.

The built-in verifiers are RecordVerifier (rows, orders, tickets, files: record_present) and RefundVerifier (refund_processed). Both check values, count, commit deadline and persistence; unavailable, incomplete, wrongly scoped or stale readback produces unknown. Effect origin is a separate conclusion: confirmed, other_actor or unknown. Verifiers also record which effects match the target and domain findings (excess, duplicate, mismatched, reversed or removed effects); explain reads those receipts without any domain logic of its own.

The agent-loop example runs this end to end against a real SQLite database, offline, in three modes: a timeout after the refund committed, a refund made by someone else, and a readback too stale to decide. The framework guide shows where the calls go in OpenAI Agents SDK, LangChain, Claude Agent SDK and MCP tool loops.

Traces round-trip through a portable, versioned JSON schema (1.0): Trace.from_json(trace.to_json()) rejects unknown fields, broken identity links and dependency cycles, and every captured payload is read-only.

Bring your own domain

Write a read-only Verifier for your predicate. It returns a VerificationResult with the state, origin and the effects it saw; to let the agent's report be judged, it also records target_effect_ids (this action's effects that match the full target):

receipt = verify(action, observation, verifier=MyVerifier())

Your application owns source trust, scope, completeness, timing and provenance; Consequa-X checks that receipts bind to the supplied action, contract and observation, and keeps the evidence structured. The artifact-delivery example implements a verifier with public APIs only, and the integration guide describes the boundary in detail. The stable API page lists what version 2 guarantees.

Upgrading from 1.x

Version 2.0 changes the trace schema to 1.0 (several actions per trace, a declared time base, keyword-only and read-only records) and moves domain interpretation into verifiers. Convert saved 1.x traces with consequa-x migrate OLD.json --output NEW.json or migrate_trace(). The migration guide lists every change and its replacement.

Command line

What it does not do

• It does not watch or control a live agent; your application captures the records. retry_advice is advice derived from captured evidence, not a guarantee.
• It does not authenticate a readback source or prove that provider metadata is true.
• An evidence-graph link records provenance, not causal necessity.
• Default reports omit captured strings and identifiers, but keep times, counts and relationships. That is field omission, not anonymization.
• No accuracy advantage over other methods is claimed.

Research

The repository also contains declared research interfaces, imported from consequa_x.research: isolated replay, contrastive and Shapley-style decision attribution, calibration studies, an optional local Ollama adapter, and the retained evidence for each study. Results so far are synthetic or exploratory local-model studies and are reported with their denominators and limits. Start with the research roadmap and the paper notes.

Platforms

The package is pure Python. Released wheels have been install-tested on Windows with Python 3.11 and 3.12 and on one Alpine Linux virtual machine with Python 3.14. macOS has not been tested yet. See the release notes for exact environments.

Contributing and support

• Questions and bugs: GitHub issues. Use synthetic data only; never post real traces, customer data or credentials.
• Security: report vulnerabilities privately as described in SECURITY.md.
• Development: see CONTRIBUTING.md.

python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
python -m pytest
python -m ruff check src tests scripts

License

MIT, copyright Devrajsinh Jhala. The website's self-hosted fonts keep their SIL Open Font License.