clause points to "Section 4.2 of the Original Agreement as amended by Amendment No. 2" - the agent resolved it...

TL;DR

Resolve citations against the fully-amended text, never the base document. Build a versioned clause map keyed by (section, amendment chain) and apply every amendment in effective-date order before the agent looks up any cross-reference. "As amended by Amendment No. 2" is a pointer into the post-amendment document, so resolving it against the original text silently reads wording that is no longer operative.

clause points to "Section 4.2 of the Original Agreement as amended by Amendment No. 2"  -  the agent resolved it against the unamended text

Steps

1. Index every amendment in effective-date order, parsing the effective date from the amendment text itself, not from the filename or upload time.

Expected: each amendment has an effective-date field; the order matches the legal sequence

1. Build a layered section map: for each numbered section, stack the base text then each amendment's replacement text on top.

Expected: "Section 4.2" resolves to a stack of versions, each tagged with the amendment that produced it

1. Parse the citation's amendment qualifier ('as amended by Amendment No. 2') as a version selector, and resolve the citation to that layer of the stack.

Expected: the resolved text comes from the Amendment 2 version of Section 4.2, not the base

1. Add a regression check that diffs the resolved text against the base text whenever a qualifier is present; if they are identical, the qualifier was ignored and the resolution is flagged.

Expected: every citation resolution logs which amendment layer it came from

1. Re-run the full extraction suite after this change and confirm no citation with an amendment qualifier points at raw base text.

Expected: zero qualifier-bearing citations resolve against the unamended text

Use this when

• A citation names an amendment: "as amended by Amendment No. 2", "as restated by Amendment 3".
• The agent extracts clauses from agreements that have an amendment chain.
• Resolved text looks subtly wrong but matches the original agreement.
• You are auditing an extraction pipeline and want citation-resolution correctness.

Not for this skill when

• The contract is a single version with no amendments.
• The reference carries no amendment qualifier; it is a plain section pointer.
• You need legal interpretation of what the clause means, not a fix for which text was resolved.
• The wrong text came from OCR or PDF parsing, not from version selection.

Variant phrasings

agent resolved against the original agreement instead of the amended version

clause citation ignores the amendment chain

"as amended by" qualifier dropped by the extraction agent

cross-reference points at pre-amendment wording

Why it happens

Agents usually resolve citations eagerly against the base document and apply amendments in a separate, later pass (or never). Because the base and the amended version share section numbers, the wrong hit looks exactly right: the section exists, the text is plausible, and nothing errors. The failure is silent by construction.

Edge cases

• An amendment restates only part of a section; the untouched paragraphs of the base text are still live. Resolve paragraph-level, not section-level.
• The qualifier names an amendment the agent does not have. Raise a missing-document warning; never guess what the amendment said.
• Effective date and signing date disagree. Order by effective date; use signing date only as a tiebreak.
• Multiple amendments touch the same section. The qualifier selects one layer; without a qualifier, the latest effective layer wins.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_AMV3Ej3SE11bm6DXW1FZjg