Journal article
Not Acting Is Not One Decision: Two Abstention Triggers in Tool-Using Agents, Why the Calibration and Permission Readings Cover Different Ones, and the Cost Term Neither Supplies
(c) 2026 Pranay Mahendrakar. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. An agent that declines to send the email has made a decision that looks like the decision a language model makes when it declines to answer a question, and the resemblance has organised the 2026 literature into two camps. One reads not-acting…