Query Transfer Can Revise Rules Without Preserving the Task

When a model follows a revised instruction, the unchanged requirements must still hold. If the destination country changes, the budget and distance ranking still apply. We copy attention queries from a final-rule restatement into a prompt that must resolve the revision. These queries govern how the model reads its context. Query transfer improves revision in Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct and Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct, as direct restatement also does. Paired scoring nevertheless exposes correct answers lost within the aggregate gains. A separate last-token query intervention tests source-score reconstruction between two prompts that both restate the final rule. In Qwen, adding record states to query transfer brings a monitored answer margin closer to its source value but lowers selection accuracy. Most new errors copy an incorrect source answer. Correct-source counterexamples reveal a second failure because the monitored margin omits an eligible competitor in the requested category. Queries from prompts without records also shift scores toward changed requirements, but these effects do not consistently improve complete execution. Complete-candidate scoring locates the missed ranking comparison, and paired evaluation identifies the successful answers an intervention fails to preserve.