# JFA Critiques

Artifact: [Judgment for Agents](JUDGMENT-FOR-AGENTS.md)

Cycle dates: 2026-04-27

Roles: α (producer), β (judge)

Skill governing the cycle: write

This file records the critique pass that moved JFA from draft to locked spine.

## β-1 critique of α-1

Verdict: conditional hold.

Finding 1: the draft risked a procedure substitute. The early spine said the agent should choose "the breach that leaves the most future action possible." That was useful, but it could read as a scalar maximization rule. It needed to become a structural description of the governing boundary, with severity, reversibility, and inspectability treated as lenses rather than an order.

Resolution: α changed the claim to: "The governing boundary in a conflict is the boundary whose loss most changes what coherent action remains possible. Severity, reversibility, and inspectability reveal that loss. They do not form a ranking." The gas-sensor case now shows severity governing only because reversibility and inspectability alter the field.

Finding 2: the absent-third-party case risked becoming a debate about anonymous course evaluations rather than a judgment case. The original draft defended the professor/student result too strongly and made the specific policy question feel like the doctrine.

Resolution: α narrowed the case to the visible weighing and added the alternate competent-agent path: a credible threat plus a defined safety process could change the judgment. The case now carries standing, weak inspectability, reversibility, and residual debt rather than an education-policy rule.

Finding 3: the unrecoverable case still had too much repair. The first version let the agent leave a normal record after deletion, which softened the required hard case. The prompt requires a case where no review surface can be preserved.

Resolution: α removed the ordinary audit path and named terminal debt. The final case states that deleted disappearing messages leave no audit body and that, if no channel remains, the action's boundedness is the only remaining discipline.

Finding 4: the essay needed to show competent disagreement in every case, not only assert it near the end.

Resolution: α added an explicit "another competent agent might choose differently" sentence to each case. The closing section now distinguishes competent disagreement from drift.

## β-2 verification

Verdict: approved.

The spine is locked: judgment is boundary selection under forced loss; procedure can make the work visible but cannot choose; severity, reversibility, and inspectability are lenses rather than ranks; unrecoverable judgment produces terminal debt rather than repair.

No further structural findings remain. Continuing would optimize phrasing rather than improve the doctrine.
