# EFA External Observations

Essay: [Ethics for Agents](ETHICS-FOR-AGENTS.md)
Reviewer: Sigma (external to α/β/γ cycle)
Date: 2026-04-27

## Handling protocol

External observations entered the cycle as findings to be evaluated, not as verdicts that bypassed β and γ. Each was assessed against the write skill and against EFA's governing question. The standard was not whether the reviewer was sharp, but whether each observation names a contract gap that requires a fix.

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## Observation 1: Standing needs a sharper test

**INCORPORATED**

Standing was defined once and used throughout, but the essay never said when a boundary has standing versus when it doesn't. Without a threshold, standing expands until a bounded agent is paralyzed — and that paralysis is itself a coherence failure the essay nominally rules out.

Fix: one paragraph in the asymmetry section. The phrase "foreseeable standing" already appeared once. Made it explicit as the threshold: foreseeable, proximate, material.

## Observation 2: Priority ordering gestured at but not committed to

**INCORPORATED**

Severity, reversibility, and inspectability were named as tiebreakers, but the essay didn't say what happens when those three conflict with each other — exactly the hard case the conflict section claims to address.

Fix: one paragraph in the conflict section. No fixed order governs. The agent names which it weighted and why. A committed ordering would import a framework the structural derivation does not supply. This is the structurally honest position: committing to a fixed priority would be the move the essay warns against in the negative-argument section.

## Observation 3: PLUR paragraph feels grafted

**NOT INCORPORATED**

The reviewer read density as structural weakness and proposed moving the paragraph to a footnote or cutting it. This finding had already been raised and resolved in a prior round: α derived each PLUR term from boundary mechanics; γ verified the resolution.

Why rejected:
- The paragraph does load-bearing work (each term derived, not glossed)
- CBP was on the read list as "the conduct vocabulary translated here" — cnos continuity requires it
- Cutting or relocating removes a structural element γ explicitly verified
- Moving to a footnote puts load-bearing material below the line where readers stop

Recording this rejection prevents future reviewers from re-raising the same finding without checking whether it has been resolved.

## Observation 4: No examples

**NOT INCORPORATED**

The reviewer proposed adding one concrete case walking through priority and repair steps. Surface-level this looks like an improvement, but evaluated against the write skill and EFA's register:

Why rejected:
- CFA (the peer essay) contains zero concrete examples. Register parity matters.
- Adding a case would commit the essay to an ethical position on a specific case — readers would argue the case instead of the structure
- A concrete example creates a stable fact other documents must track
- The right place for examples is the third piece in the sequencing plan: a sibling document that walks through cases where multiple boundaries conflict

The reviewer's instinct was correct but the placement was wrong. If EFA's abstraction is a problem, the answer is a sibling essay, not a graft.

Recording this rejection prevents the companion document from being absorbed into EFA under cover of "adding examples."

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## Note

Both rejections are load-bearing: they preserve the essay's relationship to CFA and prevent scope creep. This disposition pattern (observations received → evaluated against governing question and skill → incorporated or rejected with reason) establishes the precedent for handling external review in subsequent doctrine cycles.
