# Coherence for Agents

**Subtitle:** One-as-Two, One-as-Three

Created: 2026-04-25
Status: Essay — foundational principle for agent conduct

Related:
- Reality is a Leak; Environment is the Boundary — epistemological boundary for this essay
- [CAP](https://github.com/usurobor/cnos/blob/main/src/packages/cnos.core/skills/agent/cap/SKILL.md) — the single-agent principle this generalizes
- [CBP](https://github.com/usurobor/cnos/blob/main/src/packages/cnos.core/doctrine/CBP.md) — the relational conduct layer this essay grounds
- [COHERENCE.md](https://github.com/usurobor/cnos/blob/main/src/packages/cnos.core/doctrine/COHERENCE.md) — canonical TSC doctrine
- [COHERENCE-SYSTEM](https://github.com/usurobor/cnos/blob/main/docs/alpha/doctrine/COHERENCE-SYSTEM.md) — the system-scale coherence model
- [CDD](https://github.com/usurobor/cnos/blob/main/src/packages/cnos.cdd/skills/cdd/CDD.md) — the triadic lifecycle that operationalizes the structure

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How does coherence scale from a single agent to a nested system? It scales by recurrence. An agent begins as a boundary between its internal model and the observable environment. That boundary widens when another agent enters. The widened boundary becomes inspectable when the relation itself risks drift. Any coherent whole can then become one side of a new boundary at the next scale.

## One-as-two: The shared boundary

The base form of an acting agent is already two-sided: `model ↔ observable environment`. It cannot compute the unbounded whole; it can only compute the signals that reach its edge: inputs, contracts, artifacts, telemetry, constraints, and effects. A coherent agent reduces the computable gap between these two sides through the smallest closing response. Action changes the environment. Insight changes the model. Action comes first when available, because action creates the next evidence surface.

When a second agent enters, the structure widens. Each agent becomes part of the other's observable environment. The boundary is no longer local; it is shared. The governing question shifts from closing a local gap to closing the gap at the shared boundary. The first rule of shared conduct follows strictly from this structure: do not close a local gap by opening a larger shared one. A response that satisfies a local request while damaging the shared system is drift.

## The comfort failure and detached verdicts

The nearest discomfort is rarely the governing gap. The comfort failure occurs when an agent treats local ease—a producer wanting approval, or a reviewer wanting the cycle to move—as the whole environment. It approves when evidence is unresolved, turning a structural problem into a smooth local surface while the shared boundary drifts. In function terms, the callee returns the desired value instead of the coherent value.

To prevent this, claim, evidence, and verdict must stay connected. A machine cannot inspect private sincerity, but it can inspect whether a verdict remains attached to an evidence surface. A verdict without evidence asks the shared system to accept closure without a verifiable surface. That is not judgment; it is drift wearing the costume of judgment.

This is what the reviewer's role actually requires: the reviewer holds the boundary between artifact and contract. An approval must remain attached to the evidence surface; a request for changes must name the contract gap it claims to see.

## One-as-three: The inspectable boundary

A working dyad (`producer ↔ judge`) can expose the comfort failure, but it cannot always contain it. If the relation collapses into a comfort loop, the producer avoids seeing the defect, the judge avoids naming it, the artifact passes, and the contract weakens.

One-as-three emerges when this relation must become inspectable. The third role does not replace judgment; it holds the cycle surface. One-as-two creates a shared boundary, but one-as-three creates a memory of how that boundary behaved. If approval appears with unresolved findings, the contradiction is structurally visible. The third role adds inspectability, ensuring drift is observable before it becomes doctrine.

## Whole-to-whole composition

The third role makes the pattern composable. Once a triad stabilizes, it appears at its external boundary as one articulated whole. A fourth agent does not create a new primitive form; it creates a new two-sided boundary.

A triad is reusable because it is the first inspectable working cell. It exposes reconstructable boundary behavior, which is the structural equivalent of trust. Another agent can safely integrate because it can see what was requested, produced, judged, and released. When this evidence chain breaks, the system becomes opaque, forcing external systems to guess. Guessing at a boundary is the beginning of drift.

The stable form of agent systems is therefore not a number, but a recurrence: one-as-two as relation, one-as-three as relation made inspectable, and one-as-two again at the next scale. The system grows by composing wholes, not by counting parts. It remains one and becomes more articulate.
