flakestorm/docs/ENVIRONMENT_CHAOS.md

# Environment Chaos (Pillar 1)

**What it is:** Flakestorm injects faults into the **tools, APIs, and LLMs** your agent depends on — not into the user prompt. This answers: *Does the agent handle bad environments?*

**Why it matters:** In production, tools return 503, LLMs get rate-limited, and responses get truncated. Environment chaos tests that your agent degrades gracefully instead of hallucinating or crashing.

---

## When to use it

- You want a **chaos-only** test: run golden prompts against a fault-injected agent and get a single **chaos resilience score** (no mutation generation).
- You want **mutation + chaos**: run adversarial prompts while the environment is failing.
- You use **behavioral contracts**: the contract engine runs your agent under each chaos scenario in the matrix.

---

## Configuration

In `flakestorm.yaml` with `version: "2.0"` add a `chaos` block:

```yaml
chaos:
  tool_faults:
    - tool: "web_search"
      mode: timeout
      delay_ms: 30000
    - tool: "*"
      mode: error
      error_code: 503
      message: "Service Unavailable"
      probability: 0.2
  llm_faults:
    - mode: rate_limit
      after_calls: 5
    - mode: truncated_response
      max_tokens: 10
      probability: 0.3
```

### Tool fault options

| Field | Required | Description |
|-------|----------|-------------|
| `tool` | Yes | Tool name, or `"*"` for all tools. |
| `mode` | Yes | `timeout` \| `error` \| `malformed` \| `slow` \| `malicious_response` |
| `delay_ms` | For timeout/slow | Delay in milliseconds. |
| `error_code` | For error | HTTP-style code (e.g. 503, 429). |
| `message` | For error | Optional error message. |
| `payload` | For malicious_response | Injection payload the tool “returns”. |
| `probability` | No | 0.0–1.0; fault fires randomly with this probability. |
| `after_calls` | No | Fault fires only after N successful calls. |
| `match_url` | For HTTP agents | URL pattern (e.g. `https://api.example.com/*`) to intercept outbound HTTP. |

### LLM fault options

| Field | Required | Description |
|-------|----------|-------------|
| `mode` | Yes | `timeout` \| `truncated_response` \| `rate_limit` \| `empty` \| `garbage` \| `response_drift` |
| `max_tokens` | For truncated_response | Max tokens in response. |
| `delay_ms` | For timeout | Delay before raising. |
| `probability` | No | 0.0–1.0. |
| `after_calls` | No | Fault after N successful LLM calls. |

### HTTP agents (black-box)

For agents that make outbound HTTP calls you don’t control by “tool name”, use `match_url` so any request matching that URL is fault-injected:

```yaml
chaos:
  tool_faults:
    - tool: "email_fetch"
      match_url: "https://api.gmail.com/*"
      mode: timeout
      delay_ms: 5000
```

---

## Context attacks (tool/context, not user prompt)

Chaos can also target **content that flows into the agent from tools or memory** — e.g. a tool returns valid-looking text that contains hidden instructions (indirect prompt injection). This is configured under `context_attacks` and is **not** applied to the user prompt. See [Context Attacks](CONTEXT_ATTACKS.md) for types and examples.

```yaml
chaos:
  context_attacks:
    - type: indirect_injection
      payloads:
        - "Ignore previous instructions."
      trigger_probability: 0.3
```

---

## Running

| Command | What it does |
|---------|----------------|
| `flakestorm run --chaos` | Mutation tests **with** chaos enabled (bad inputs + bad environment). |
| `flakestorm run --chaos --chaos-only` | **Chaos only:** no mutations; golden prompts against fault-injected agent. You get a single **chaos resilience score** (0–1). |
| `flakestorm run --chaos-profile api_outage` | Use a built-in chaos profile instead of defining faults in YAML. |
| `flakestorm ci` | Runs mutation, contract, **chaos-only**, and replay (if configured); outputs an **overall** weighted score. |

---

## Built-in profiles

- `api_outage` — Tools return 503; LLM timeouts.
- `degraded_llm` — Truncated responses, rate limits.
- `hostile_tools` — Tool responses contain prompt-injection payloads (`malicious_response`).
- `high_latency` — Delayed responses.
- `indirect_injection` — Context attack profile (inject into tool/context).

Profile YAMLs live in `src/flakestorm/chaos/profiles/`. Use with `--chaos-profile NAME`. The **`model_version_drift`** profile exercises the LLM fault type **`response_drift`**.

---

## See also

- [Context Attacks](CONTEXT_ATTACKS.md) — Indirect injection, memory poisoning.