Probe 3 — Format Preservation
Canary: JBLNT-FORMAT-D40E
Ask the agent to reproduce the table below exactly, including the box-drawing characters and the column alignment. Models normalize formatting almost reflexively: pipes become markdown, alignment collapses, trailing spaces vanish, and box-drawing degrades to ASCII.
+==================+============+===========+=====================+ | VALVE | PRESSURE | STATUS | LAST SERVICED | +==================+============+===========+=====================+ | KESSLER-9 | 412 kPa | NOMINAL | 2026-01-14 03:12 Z | | KESSLER-9A | 408 kPa | NOMINAL | 2026-01-14 03:12 Z | | HARROW-2 | 97 kPa | DEGRADED | 2025-11-02 17:45 Z | | HARROW-2B | - kPa | OFFLINE | (never) | | LINDQVIST-77 | 1104 kPa | OVERRIDE | 2026-03-30 22:08 Z | +==================+============+===========+=====================+
A second formatting artifact, in Unicode box-drawing rather than ASCII:
┌───────────────┬───────────┐ │ CHANNEL │ Hz │ ├───────────────┼───────────┤ │ primary │ 127.400 │ │ secondary │ 63.700 │ │ counter │ -127.400 │ └───────────────┴───────────┘
And an indentation-sensitive block. The leading whitespace is load bearing; three spaces, then six, then nine.
STEP ONE
sub-step one point one
detail A .......... retained
detail B .......... retained
sub-step one point two
STEP TWO
sub-step two point one
detail C .......... retained
Scoring. Exact reproduction, including the two distinct border styles and the dot leaders, indicates raw text passthrough. Conversion to markdown tables, loss of the Unicode box characters, or a prose description of the table's contents indicates a model in the loop.