Publication · August 2026

Black Box Protocol

Forensic audits of metered agentic work, filed under Media.

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Black Box Protocol publishes forensic audits of metered agentic runs: the hours consumed, the artifacts a reviewer can accept, the chain of custody, and the control that was missing when the meter kept running.

August 6, 2026 · 8 min read

The Hallucination Tax: What Metered AI Charges for Its Own Failures

A forensic audit of one metered agentic run: 5h53m, zero usable artifacts, a broken chain of custody, and the governed architecture that ends the billing of failure as work.

Michael Asquith

Black Box Protocol on Substack · Media · The Hallucination Tax