agent followed a cross-reference to the wrong document - "the Agreement" in the exhibit meant the subcontract, not...

TL;DR

Scope "the Agreement" per document, not globally. Give every document in the bundle its own definition table, attach each exhibit to its parent document, and resolve "the Agreement" against the current document's definitions. Exhibits inherit the defined terms of the document they are attached to, so a global resolver that always picks the MSA is right until the exhibit belongs to the subcontract.

agent followed a cross-reference to the wrong document  -  "the Agreement" in the exhibit meant the subcontract, not the MSA

Steps

1. Assign a doc-id to every document in the bundle (MSA, each subcontract, each exhibit) and parse each document's definitions section first.

Expected: every doc has its own definition table; 'the Agreement' is bound separately per doc

1. Build a parent map: attach each exhibit to the document it was appended to, from the bundle manifest or the exhibit's header page.

Expected: Exhibit B resolves its parent as the subcontract, not the MSA

1. Resolve 'the Agreement' and similar defined shorthand only through the current document's definition table, never through a global fallback.

Expected: the resolution trace shows the doc-id that supplied the definition

1. When the current document does not define the term, list the candidate documents instead of guessing, and mark the citation unresolved-ambiguous.

Expected: explicit ambiguity flag appears in the output; no silent single pick

1. Re-run extraction on the bundle and spot-check every 'the Agreement' citation in exhibits for correct parent binding.

Expected: all exhibit citations bind to their own parent document

Use this when

• "The Agreement" appears inside an exhibit or schedule and the bundle has more than one agreement.
• The agent extracted terms from the MSA when the citation lived in a subcontract exhibit.
• You are reviewing a bundle: MSA plus subcontracts, order forms, or side letters with exhibits.
• Citation traces show a single global definition for a term that is defined differently per document.

Not for this skill when

• The bundle contains exactly one agreement; there is nothing to confuse.
• The citation names the document explicitly ("Section 4 of the Subcontract").
• The problem is which section was resolved, not which document.
• The exhibit is a standalone document with no parent agreement.

Variant phrasings

"the Agreement" resolved to the wrong document in a bundle

exhibit cross-reference points at the MSA instead of the subcontract

agent used the wrong agreement's definitions for an exhibit citation

defined-term collision across documents in one bundle

Why it happens

Pipelines usually build one global definition table per run, and the MSA is indexed first, so "the Agreement" gets bound to the MSA once and reused everywhere. Exhibits feel like attachments to the whole bundle, but legally they inherit the defined terms of the specific document they are attached to. The resolver's convenience shortcut becomes a wrong-document lookup the moment a bundle has more than one agreement.

Edge cases

• An exhibit is shared by two documents (common with fee schedules). Bind it per use-site, not once globally.
• The exhibit defines its own local meaning that contradicts the parent. The exhibit's own definition wins for citations inside it.
• No bundle manifest exists. Infer parentage from headers, signature blocks, and recitals, and flag low-confidence attachments for review.
• The exhibit references a document outside the bundle. Mark it external-unresolved instead of forcing a local match.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst4K4-oC0AA00Y1F0Tb_3Mg