FIELD NOTE / TIKTOK
The task agent did everything right.
The complete written thought and the evidence behind it. The video edition will follow its public release.
The written argument is here.
This approved TikTok edition is on the journal now. Its video player and original platform link will appear after each public release is verified.
The task agent did everything right.
Video caption
The task agent did everything right. Reviewers see only the ticket and generated diff. Do this because drift accumulates across handoffs. #EricFieldNotes
Full written post / accessibility read
Fictional customer says: move my data only after I receive a notice. A planning AI makes a shorter ticket: migrate the data. The coding agent implements the ticket, tests pass and deployment succeeds. The notice never happens.
The diff can be clean. The tests can match it. Everyone downstream can agree, because the missing clause lived in an earlier document nobody attached. This is an attention and authority failure across the workflow.
Before approval, open the original customer decision and name the notice trigger. Check the task, implementation and actual notification record against it. If the source is unavailable, the release cannot claim customer alignment.
Keep a chain of source-linked constraints from customer request to deployed state. When a downstream agent executes a wrong paraphrase perfectly, fix the handoff contract and replay the full acceptance test.
#EricFieldNotes
Four-beat scene transcript
1. The task agent did everything right.
Fictional customer says: move my data only after I receive a notice. A planning AI makes a shorter ticket: migrate the data. The coding agent implements the ticket, tests pass and deployment succeeds. The notice never happens.
Visual: The customer still got the wrong behavior.
2. A code review may miss this entirely.
The diff can be clean. The tests can match it. Everyone downstream can agree, because the missing clause lived in an earlier document nobody attached. This is an attention and authority failure across the workflow.
Visual: Reviewers see only the ticket and generated diff.
3. Run a source-versus-behavior check.
Before approval, open the original customer decision and name the notice trigger. Check the task, implementation and actual notification record against it. If the source is unavailable, the release cannot claim customer alignment.
Visual: One test asks whether the customer condition survived.
4. Do not grade only the last agent.
Keep a chain of source-linked constraints from customer request to deployed state. When a downstream agent executes a wrong paraphrase perfectly, fix the handoff contract and replay the full acceptance test.
Visual: Do this because drift accumulates across handoffs.
Research and claim limits
- Mohamed et al., LLM as a Broken Telephone, ACL 2025 (S167)
- Perez et al., When LLMs Play the Telephone Game, ICLR 2025 (S168)
The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.