Published on April 26, 2025 2:40 AM GMT
I've been thinking about how we evaluate LLM agents. Most current benchmarks focus on whether an agent completes a task and whether the output looks good.
But I think there's something missing: evaluating how agents reflect, adapt, and maintain coherence over time, especially in recursive or multi-step workflows.
Not just "did it finish?", but "did it notice when it was failing?", "did it adapt sensibly?", "did it stay internally consistent?"
I'm working on a framework for a few months where agents could be assessed across:
• Reflection depth: how much the agent catches and corrects its own mistakes
• Recovery adaptability: whether it meaningfully changes approach after detecting errors
• Tone/identity coherence: whether it stays logically and tonally stable across recursive outputs
• Task viability: whether it achieves goals without cascading into failure modes
Techniques like Chain of Thought and Tree of Thought encourage more structured reasoning, and some reflection frameworks exist for local error checking. But it seems to me that none yet focus on recursive viability: agents' ability to detect systemic failure, modulate tone under recursion, and maintain coherent identity across extended workflows.
Why post this here:
I know LessWrong has a deep history thinking about agent robustness, corrigibility, and failure detection.
I'm not sure if this "recursive viability" framing is new, redundant, misguided, or possibly useful.
Things I'd love critique on:
• Is recursive viability even something meaningful or measurable yet?
• Does focusing on reflection and tone stability add anything beyond current prompting and error correction methods?
• Are there structural risks or obvious dead-ends I'm not seeing?
(Context: this is part of a larger architecture l'm building focused on recursive self-management in agents, using a combination of OODA, VSM, DSA and other cybernetic theory. I've been running agents in deep recursion for a while now, but I want to pressure-test the core viability concept first.)
I've also been working on diagrams modelling recursive system shifts-covering how agents might detect overload, trigger recovery, and maintain internal coherence over extended loops. If that's something people are interested in, l'm happy to share more in a follow-up.
Really appreciate any pushback or pointers to related prior work I should be reading.
Discuss
