A local agent can rely on proximity.

It sees the working tree. It runs commands nearby. It leaves files behind.

A distributed agent cannot rely on that. It might run on another laptop, a cloud machine, a copied workspace, or a short-lived container. When the work returns, the coordinator needs more than a patch. It needs a receipt.

A Patch Is Not Enough

A patch says what changed.

It does not say what world the worker saw.

For distributed work, that missing context is the dangerous part:

which head was used
which region was claimed
which files were read
which evidence was produced
which assumptions were stale
which task caused the work

The receipt binds those facts to the patch. It turns "here is some code" into "here is work produced under these conditions."

Receipts Create Causality

Distributed systems need causality because time is not shared cleanly.

One worker may finish after another worker has already moved the repo. A cloud run may produce a valid patch against an old head. A local run may produce a test result that no longer proves the same thing.

A receipt lets the coordinator ask:

is this evidence still current?
does this region still mean the same thing?
did another decision invalidate the proof?
can this patch be rebased, or must it rerun?

That question should be mechanical. The worker should not have to explain it in prose.

The Coordinator Applies

Remote workers should not mutate shared state directly.

They should produce receipts. The coordinator should decide whether the receipt can be admitted, rebased, split, rerun, or rejected.

That keeps distributed compute cheap while keeping shared state deliberate.

Receipts Are Portable

A good receipt can move across machines.

It can be written to disk, synced, inspected in a dashboard, attached to a queue outcome, or replayed into a later decision. The point is not where the worker ran. The point is that the returned object has enough shape to be trusted.

The Mental Model

Distributed agents do not return answers.

They return evidence-bound claims about work done in a particular world.