Delegation Creates Conditional Sub-Obligations, Not Discharged Accountability
An output-dependent delegated workflow creates conditional sub-obligations. Validated predecessor evidence activates the successor; arbitrary output transport does not. Intermediate worker success does not discharge the parent outcome obligation, which remains pending until the final validated audit.
Terminal predecessor failure must propagate a durable blocked state to every unreachable descendant. Leaving those descendants waiting creates a zombie obligation: it is not executable, discharged, cancelled, or terminally reported. The 2026-08-17 delegated-cognition run exhibits this exact defect.
Downstream authority must remain a subset of root authority, and replaying the same success event must not launch duplicate workers. The finite workflow checker passes 14 of 14 tests.
Research packet: delegated-obligation-workflow-control.md