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    "story_id": "mp-2026-08-31-026",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-evoundo-recoverable-agents",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-08-31-morning-0053",
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    "section": "safety",
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    "headline": "Self-Modifying Agents Needed a Way Back",
    "slug": "self-modifying-agents-needed-a-way-back",
    "dek": "EvoUndo verifies whether agent-generated changes can be reversed from states other than the one that created them.",
    "summary": "EvoUndo verifies whether agent-generated changes can be reversed from states other than the one that created them.",
    "body_text": "Across 600 unseen self-evolution tasks, the framework found 197 capability-improving mutations that failed recoverability checks. Conventional repair recovered none under the original representation; an extended recovery calculus and exact state addressing raised oracle-defined recovery sharply in controlled strata. Results differed on one interaction across model backbones, reinforcing the paper's claim that rollback requires co-design across verification, grounding and recovery language rather than another prompt.",
    "why_it_matters": "EvoUndo verifies whether agent-generated changes can be reversed from states other than the one that created them.",
    "limitations": [],
    "importance": 8,
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    "first_published_at": "2026-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "agent self-modification",
      "rollback",
      "verification"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": []
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-08-31-015",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2608.28363",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28363",
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      "published_at": "2026-08-28T10:15:36.000-04:00",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
  },
  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "Self-Modifying Agents Needed a Way Back",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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