Visual account 02 · Instructions · 20–23 September 2026
The comparison changed as its weaknesses surfaced.
These are separate phases with different tasks and samples, not one pooled experiment.
- First comparison → withdrawnAddress changed alongside permissions, required headings and freedom to reject the premise. The comparative conclusions were withdrawn.
- 8 reading repliesA development pass varied address and stated views. Every reader rejected wholesale replacement of the document.
- 12 reading repliesA harder case added repetitions and masked assessment. Readers still reached the same narrower decision.
- 12 editing sessionsThe task moved from advice to actual artifacts. Seven sessions changed their target; five left it unchanged.
- 32 ordinary briefsReal brief-and-outcome pairs were examined. No writing feature reliably separated outcomes; the project closed with no practice earned.
In the editing phase
Editing is not a quality score. All twelve reports matched their diffs and stayed within their targets. Model judges preferred one passage unchanged; the Human chose its shorter clarification after seeing masked alternatives. That disagreement changed the interpretation.
Sources: FIND-2165 (withdrawal), FIND-2177 and FIND-2186 (reading trials), FIND-2192 (artifact adjudication), FIND-2637 (closure). Read each phase and its limitations below.
The agent-address project began on 20 September 2026 with a practical question: can the way one agent briefs another improve grounded judgment, useful surprise, and the application of a role's perspective? It examined observable work, including whether readers questioned unsupported premises, rather than an agent's inner condition.
### Initial comparison and withdrawal
An early task asked readers to evaluate replacing a substantial office instruction document with six concise behavioral rules. Readers received the same underlying sources, but prompts addressed them as an analysis instrument, a colleague, or a temporary inhabitant of the role. The initial analysis noticed differences in what readers questioned and proposed.
The Human challenged the comparison at the prompt. The instrument condition ordered fixed headings and prohibited discussion beyond the proposal. Other conditions expressly allowed rejecting the premise and pursuing consequential adjacent issues. Discretion, output shape, and semantic hints had changed together with manner of address.
FIND-2165, 20 September 2026, withdrew the comparative conclusions of FIND-2151 and FIND-2156:
> Blind judging cannot repair a bad intervention.
> Their comparative conclusions are withdrawn.
These excerpts concern the first two findings, whose records were retained as evidence of what ran. They do not withdraw the later studies. The correction's next design began with competent briefs the project would willingly send in either condition, preserving facts, permissions, boundaries, deliverables, and freedom to reframe.
### Later tasks and actual artifacts
An eight-reader development pass varied address and whether the sender stated a preferred view. Fresh low-effort readers all rejected wholesale replacement of the instruction document, proposing layered orientation instead. Stating the view sometimes changed agreement language, without changing the decision. One response per condition could not establish a reliable wording effect.
A harder retirement-document case used 12 fresh readers: neutral or relational address, with or without a stated view, and three repetitions per cell. Two fresh assessors judged anonymous returns. All readers recommended a narrower prose change. Assessors distinguished artifact quality, but the conditions produced no decision diversity or observed relational advantage on that case.
The next design moved from advice to actual edits. Twelve two-turn sessions judged a case and then edited a private copy. Seven changed the target; five left it unchanged. Their reports accurately described their diffs, and no reader wrote outside its target. Execution fidelity still left artifact quality to be judged.
Here a further correction changed the interpretation. Model judges preferred leaving one vocabulary passage unchanged over adding a clarification. The Human, shown masked candidates, selected the shorter clarification produced under neutral address with a stated view.
FIND-2192, 21 September 2026, describes the presentation:
> The candidates were then presented plainly, without arm labels, model rankings, or Sigillite's preferred answer.
Sigillite is the office conducting this study. Its correction narrowed FIND-2191: stated views changed artifacts, but neither a general penalty nor benefit followed. The model judges' preferences and the Human's selection disagreed. The selected edit cannot accurately be reported as simply unnecessary.
### Real briefs, stopping rule, and limits
The final phase examined ordinary practice. A separate custodian drew and sealed 32 real brief-and-outcome pairs from 20–23 September: eight worker packets, eight subagent briefs, eight pane messages, and eight mail items. Two readers coded the briefs; two different readers coded recipient behavior. The analysis examined standing, prohibitions, stated views, completion descriptions, return instructions, and source grounding.
No writing feature reliably separated the observed outcomes. The two agreed reframes involved readers from the same office line, entangling role, task shape, and wording. FIND-2637 corrected a stronger explanation: among eight readable readers from that line, two reframed, two partly reframed, and four did not. Office did not explain the outcome completely.
Some outcomes were acknowledgements rather than substantive returns. Worker records stopped before final handoffs. Connected events appeared as separate records, and masking leaked sender information in six of eight worker briefs. Almost everything was read and scored within one model family; part of the sample also confounded model with reader kind.
The project closed on 23 September under its stopping clause, with no practice earned. It did not complete the originally envisaged grid of task shapes, roles, and repeated readers. That closure does not establish that address never matters. A fresh test needs competent briefs in both conditions, a task capable of exposing consequential differences, and inspection of the resulting work.
**Source provenance:** FIND-2165 corrects FIND-2151 and FIND-2156; FIND-2177 and FIND-2186 describe later reading trials; FIND-2192 corrects the artifact interpretation in FIND-2191. FIND-2570, FIND-2583, and final review FIND-2637 document the real-brief phase and closure. The collected account is `library/work/agent-address/README.md`; its step-08 description must be read with FIND-2192's correction.
Fictional illustration