core-labs/core
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests 1 Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions
core/docs/decisions/ADR-0017-agency-scope.md
Shay 2177492646 docs(adr): resolve Agency + Tool-use scope decisions (ADR-0017, ADR-0018) 
Pins the two open scope decisions that the capability roadmap
(ADR-0016) tagged "Before Phase 3". Both are resolved with explicit
ADRs and PROGRESS.md is updated to reflect.

ADR-0017 - Agency: responsive-with-axiology
  - Turn boundary stays responsive (no autonomous initiative, no
    background agent loop, no inter-turn processes).
  - IdentityManifold value axes become load-bearing for articulator
    candidate selection (within a single turn). Goal-directedness
    lives inside the turn, not across turns.
  - Replay determinism is the load-bearing constraint that rules
    out pure agentic loops.
  - Rejects pure-responsive (would relegate identity to read-only)
    and pure-agentic (would break trace_hash replay contract).

ADR-0018 - Tool use: typed deterministic operators
  - Operators are pure functions over CORE's typed state. No
    external IO at this stage (no shells, network, external models).
  - Operator registry is curated, small, ADR-gated; no plug-in
    surface, no dynamic loading.
  - Operators participate in trace_hash so replay stays bit-stable.
  - Initial operator set lands in Phase 3 v2: transitive_walk over
    proposition graph + path_recall over vault. Closes Gap 1 + Gap 2
    from the inference-closure / multi-step-reasoning / compositionality
    / cross-domain-transfer v1 findings.
  - Rules out: generic plugin protocols, LLM-as-judge, approximate
    retrieval, anything that breaks the exact-CGA / replay
    contracts in CLAUDE.md.

Future extensions recorded but explicitly deferred: calculator
(Phase 4+), document retrieval over content-addressed packs,
metaphor / narrative / writing-style operators (downstream of
cross-domain-transfer literal case working).

This unblocks Phase 3 v2 engineering. Next: the transitive_walk +
path_recall bundle as a single bounded PR per ADR-0018, plus the
trace_hash extension to fold operator invocation records.
2026-05-16 14:51:42 -07:00

5.2 KiB
Raw Blame History

ADR-0017 — Agency Scope: Responsive-with-Axiology

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-05-16 Authors: Joshua Shay Supersedes: Open Scope Decisions row "Agency (responsive vs. goal-directed)" in docs/PROGRESS.md.

Context

The capability roadmap (ADR-0016) flagged agency as an open scope decision required before Phase 3 engineering begins. Two extreme positions are available:

  • Pure responsive. The system processes one input per turn and produces one output. No internal aims, no autonomous initiative. This is what CognitiveTurnPipeline.run(text) is today.
  • Pure agentic. The system maintains internal goals, plans trajectories that pursue those goals across many turns, and may initiate actions outside of user-triggered input. Each goal-step can in principle invoke the system without external prompting.

A choice between these endpoints shapes how Phase 3 reasoning-depth work is structured. The transitive-walk and path-recall operators the inference-closure lane requires can be implemented either way, but their semantics differ: the agentic reading makes them part of an internal planner that runs across turns; the responsive reading makes them per-turn deterministic functions invoked by the articulator.

Decision

CORE is responsive-with-axiology:

  1. Responsive turn boundary preserved. Every cognitive turn is triggered by an external input: a user utterance, a CLI invocation, or an explicit replay command. The system never initiates a turn autonomously. No background agent loop runs between turns.

  2. Axiology is first-class within the turn. The IdentityManifold and its ValueAxis set are not decorative identity-decoration; they are the value gradient against which the articulator chooses among candidate articulation surfaces. When the proposition-graph planner produces multiple valid completions, the choice is the one that scores highest against the manifold's value axes. This is goal-directedness within a single responsive turn, not across turns.

  3. No autonomous initiative. The system has no loop() or pursue(goal) entry point. Anything that looks like long-horizon pursuit is a sequence of responsive turns chained by the calling layer, not an internal process.

  4. Replay determinism is the load-bearing constraint. The responsive-with-axiology shape is preserved partly because pure agentic loops break deterministic replay: the trace_hash contract in core/cognition/trace.py assumes a turn is a deterministic function of (input, prior-state). Adding non-input-triggered internal actions would put state changes between turns that replay cannot reconstruct.

Consequences

  • Phase 3 v2 engineering shape. The transitive-walk and path- recall operators (Gap 1 and Gap 2 in evals/inference_closure/gaps.md) are per-turn deterministic functions, not background processes. They are invoked synchronously by the articulator during a single turn. No turn- spanning planner is required to close the Phase 3 inference-depth lanes.

  • IdentityManifold axes become load-bearing. Today the axes are partially decorative (the empirical investigation in commit 86ef117 showed identity_score.alignment = 1.0 universally because no candidate-selection step actually consults them). Under this ADR, the next refinement of articulator candidate selection should consult the axes. This is also the load-bearing path to making fix #3 of the adversarial-identity defense work geometrically.

  • No goal-stack data structure. CORE will not gain a Goal, Plan, or Pursuit typed object as part of Phase 3. Anything that looks like a multi-step goal is the user explicitly asking for multiple responsive turns.

  • Self-explanation remains responsive. The forthcoming core/cognition/explain.py module (Gap 3 in evals/introspection/gaps.md) is invoked on a turn-id; it does not introspect autonomously.

  • Persona / character work is axiology-side, not agency-side. persona/motor.py shapes articulation output within the responsive turn. It does not run between turns.

Rejected alternatives

  • Pure responsive (no axiology). Rejected because the IdentityManifold already exists as an architectural commitment (ADR-0010) and the adversarial-identity defense work explicitly depends on axes being able to shape behaviour, not just be measured. Pure responsive would relegate identity to read-only evidence, which conflicts with ADR-0010's "identity is inalienable" claim.

  • Pure agentic. Rejected because it breaks the deterministic replay contract. CORE's value proposition over frontier models is partly that any turn can be replayed bit-for-bit; an autonomous inter-turn process makes that contract unenforceable. Also rejected on philosophical grounds: agency as autonomous pursuit is not what CORE claims to be. CORE is a deterministic cognitive engine, not an autonomous agent.

Verification

  • Phase 3 v2 work on Gaps 1+2 is scoped as per-turn deterministic operators (see ADR-0018).
  • No new turn-spanning processes are introduced in Phase 3.
  • Replay determinism contracts in tests/test_determinism_proofs.py continue to pass for all multi-turn scenarios.