Abstract
Small language model (SLM) agents need safety controls that track consequences across tool calls with little monitoring overhead. A private read, for example, becomes a leak when a later action sends that data outside the system. We introduce CARB (Conformal Agent Risk Budget), which calibrates when to stop an agent using a ledger of harm incurred before stopping. Under exchangeable episodes, standard conformal risk control bounds this declared loss in expectation over calibration and a future episode. G-CARB selects scorer evidence along observable dependencies from private sources to outgoing actions. The ledger still covers the entire executed history, and computing the gate score requires no additional language-model inference. On AgentDojo replay with two 14B backbones, G-CARB roughly halves scorer-input records at intermediate risk budgets while improving autonomous task completion relative to full-prefix scoring; random context of the same size achieves similar gains. Controlled examples show how retaining the relevant dependency can further avoid stopping benign work.
Keywords
Publication details
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- Green open access
Cite this article
APA 7
Yu, Z., Gu, Y., Nia, V. P., & Asgharian, M. (2026). G-CARB: Graph-Localized Conformal Agent Risk Budget for Compositional Harm. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/g-carb-graph-localized-conformal-agent-risk-budget-for-compositional-harm
MLA 9
Yu, Zijun, et al. "G-CARB: Graph-Localized Conformal Agent Risk Budget for Compositional Harm." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/g-carb-graph-localized-conformal-agent-risk-budget-for-compositional-harm.
Chicago (author–date)
Yu, Zijun, Yu Gu, Vahid Partovi Nia, and Masoud Asgharian. 2026. "G-CARB: Graph-Localized Conformal Agent Risk Budget for Compositional Harm." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/g-carb-graph-localized-conformal-agent-risk-budget-for-compositional-harm.
Harvard
Yu, Z., Gu, Y., Nia, V. P. and Asgharian, M. (2026) 'G-CARB: Graph-Localized Conformal Agent Risk Budget for Compositional Harm', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/g-carb-graph-localized-conformal-agent-risk-budget-for-compositional-harm.
Vancouver
Yu Z, Gu Y, Nia VP, Asgharian M. G-CARB: Graph-Localized Conformal Agent Risk Budget for Compositional Harm. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/g-carb-graph-localized-conformal-agent-risk-budget-for-compositional-harm
IEEE
Z. Yu, Y. Gu, V. P. Nia, and M. Asgharian, "G-CARB: Graph-Localized Conformal Agent Risk Budget for Compositional Harm," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/g-carb-graph-localized-conformal-agent-risk-budget-for-compositional-harm.