Unit 04.01: Facts, and how you know each one

The most dangerous item in an agent's state is something it concluded earlier and nobody checked.

Track the source, not only the value

Each fact carries where it came from and whether it was verified against that source.

The example below shows three facts, one of them a guess.

FACT                              SOURCE                  VERIFIED
invoice INV-1187 is for 240.00    the invoice record      yes
payment terms are 30 days         contract 8841           yes
the customer usually pays late    the agent's own guess   NO

carried forward:  the two verified facts
dropped:          "the customer usually pays late"

  The third is the dangerous one. Left in the state it becomes a premise for
  every later step, and by then nothing records that it was a guess.

"The customer usually pays late" came from the agent itself. Left in the state it becomes a premise for every later step, and by then nothing records that it was invented - it looks exactly like the two facts that came from documents.

Carrying only verified facts forward is a one-line filter and it prevents a whole class of compounding error.

The mistake this prevents

The mistake is treating the state as a scratchpad the agent can write to freely. Anything it writes becomes indistinguishable from what it read, which means a plausible guess in step two is a fact by step five.

Takeaway

Record how each fact was established and carry forward only what a source supports. An agent's own guess, left in the state, becomes a premise.

Mark complete