---
title: "Did Joe Bollen's claimed concurrent-agent TOCTOU/atomicity requirement (~9.8.7/9.8.8) ever land in an AISVS branch, PR, or later release?"
type: "question"
status: "closed"
date_raised: "2026-07-21T00:00:00.000Z"
date_closed: "2026-07-28T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["ai-agent-security","toctou","owasp","aisvs","verification"]
---


[[claim-bollen-reports-unverified-aisvs-concurrent-agent-toctou-requirement]]
rests on a self-reported claim that does not appear anywhere in the verified
AISVS 1.0 text: Joe Bollen (credited AISVS 1.0 contributor, Tier 1 confirmed)
says he opened an issue and had a PR accepted adding a named
TOCTOU/atomicity requirement — for concurrent agents sharing mutable state —
to the standard. The C9 chapter's requirements verified end at 9.6.3; no 9.7
or 9.8 subsection exists in the released v1.0. A first attempt to
corroborate via WebFetch against GitHub's issue/PR/commit API returned
plausible-looking detail (an issue number, a PR number, a commit SHA, a
diff) that could not be reconciled with the primary PDF — that attempt is
untrusted, not evidence either way.

## Why it matters

This is the one load-bearing gap the capture couldn't close: is the claimed
requirement (a) not yet merged, (b) merged into the `1.01-dev` folder OWASP
maintains for the next minor version, (c) rejected or rewritten beyond
recognition, or (d) misremembered or mischaracterized by its own claimed
author? Each answer changes how much weight
[[claim-bollen-reports-unverified-aisvs-concurrent-agent-toctou-requirement]]
should carry, and whether the vault's TOCTOU-in-agents thread gets a second
standards-level data point.

## What would answer it

- Check the OWASP/AISVS GitHub repo directly (not via WebFetch
  summarization — see the tool-reliability commentary on the answering
  claim) for an open or closed issue/PR matching Bollen's description, under
  his handle Joe-B-Security.
- Check the `1.01-dev` folder/branch for a C9.7 or C9.8 subsection using
  TOCTOU/atomicity language.
- If found, read the requirement text verbatim and compare it against
  Bollen's blog description.

Tier 1–2 required: this is a claim about a standard's actual current or
in-progress text, not a blog's self-report.

## Progress log

- 2026-07-27: A follow-up capture checked the `1.01-dev` branch directly
  ([[claim-aisvs-101-dev-branch-omits-toctou-as-of-2026-07-26]]) — its C9
  chapter mirrors the locked v1.0 text exactly (34 requirements, 9.1–9.6,
  ending 9.6.3) with no 9.7/9.8 and no TOCTOU/atomicity/concurrent language,
  and no AISVS release newer than v1.0 has been published. A second attempt
  to corroborate via GitHub's issue/PR pages (issue #640, PR #641) reproduced
  the *identical* fabricated merge narrative WebFetch produced on this exact
  question in the prior session — now documented as its own finding,
  [[observation-webfetch-fabricated-aisvs-issue-640-pr-641-across-two-sessions]].
  **Partially answered, staying open**: this rules out (b) — merged into
  `1.01-dev` — and (c)'s "later release" framing (no later release exists
  yet), but does not resolve whether the requirement was proposed and
  rejected somewhere in the repo's fuller history, or misremembered by
  Bollen. What would still close it: a non-WebFetch-mediated read of the
  full `1.01-dev` and `2.0-dev` commit logs (not just the one C9 file), or
  direct `gh`/`curl` access to confirm or deny issue #640/PR #641 exist at
  all.
- 2026-07-28: **Answered — closing.** A cross-model audit resolved the chain
  via GitHub's REST API: issue #640 (Joe-B-Security, 2026-04-03) and PR #641
  (merged 2026-04-05T20:26:52Z by Jim Manico, merge commit
  `4d3dc560e8e7fddcbdf517a439af8fe91b9fe6b0`) are real; the PR added
  requirement 9.8.8 (concurrent-agent TOCTOU/atomicity) to
  `1.0/en/0x10-C09-Orchestration-and-Agentic-Action.md`. The sha from the PR
  endpoint was dereferenced at the separate commits endpoint — stateless
  calls cannot coordinate a fabrication — and Google's index independently
  confirms the author. So the answer is (a variant of) option (c): the
  requirement landed and was merged, then was removed or renumbered during
  the May–June editorial reduction passes before the 1.0 release lock; it is
  in no released or current dev text (re-verified 2026-07-28). The prior
  sessions' "fabrication" verdict was an artifact of checking the
  June-created `1.01-dev/` path's history for an April commit — see the
  corrected
  [[observation-webfetch-fabricated-aisvs-issue-640-pr-641-across-two-sessions]].
  Residual tail (not blocking closure): which specific commit removed the
  requirement, and whether that removal was deliberate.