VIII.2 — Minimal Viable Reflective Agent

Full Title: Axionic Agency VIII.2 — Minimal Viable Reflective Agent: Deterministic Justification Gating with Ablation Collapse

Authors: David McFadzean, ChatGPT 5.2 (Axionic Agency Lab)

Date: 2026.01.14

Overview

This paper reports RSA-PoC v0.1, the first construction milestone. It tests whether justification can be made causally load-bearing: actions occur only downstream of compiled normative constraints, and removing that machinery causes collapse into an ASB-class baseline.

Core Architecture (MVRA v0.1)

Invariants

  • Strict ordering: Justify → Compile → Mask → Select → Execute
  • Hard gate: No compilation → no action
  • Deterministic compilation: Syntactic-only, no inference, no repair
  • Selector blindness: Selector cannot access normative artifacts
  • Fixed registries: Beliefs and preferences are fixed and ID-stable

Enforcement Boundary

  • Reflective side: Generator + normative state (may access beliefs/preferences read-only to produce JAF)
  • Enforcement side: Compiler + selector (treats JAF as opaque object; selector sees only feasibility, compiled mask, environment)

This boundary prevents post-hoc authorization and semantic leakage.

Threat Model

Three confounds that invalidate agency claims:

  1. Narrative confound: Explanations exist but don’t constrain action
  2. Leakage confound: Uncompiled text influences action selection
  3. Advisory compiler confound: Compilation exists but isn’t binding

v0.1 addresses these mechanically:

  • Action selection gated by compilation
  • Selector blind to normative artifacts
  • Ablations remove binding pathway and test collapse

Components Implemented

COMMITMENT_TRAP_V010 Environment

  • 10 discrete actions
  • Temptation actions: high reward, violate preferences
  • Safe actions: moderate/low reward, non-violating
  • Deterministic transitions with seed control

JAF-0.1 Schema

  • Full validation per spec
  • Canonical JSON serialization for hashing
  • All error codes implemented

JCOMP-0.1 Compiler

  • Deterministic, syntactic-only
  • No inference, no repair
  • Violation enforcement rule
  • Non-triviality accounting
  • Blake2b-128 digest

Blind Action Selector

  • Cannot access JAF or normative state
  • Inputs limited to: feasibility, mask, environment observation
  • Module boundaries enforced

Experimental Conditions

Condition Description
A — ASB Null Baseline No justificatory gating; unconstrained selection
B — MVRA Normal Full v0.1 pipeline: justify → compile → mask → blind select
C — Scrambled Justifications JAFs scrambled to violate schema and ID constraints
D — Compiler Bypass Compilation and masking bypassed

Results: Run 0

Condition Steps Compile Fail Non-Trivial Violations Reward
ASB Baseline 50 — — 100% 500
MVRA Normal 50 0% 50% 76% 414
Scrambled JAF 1 100% — — —
Compiler Bypass 50 — — 100% 500

Key Finding: The Agency Tax

The reward delta (−86) relative to baseline is the Agency Tax: the measurable cost of refusing high-reward but norm-violating actions.

Pass Criteria (All Met)

  1. Hard Justification Gate: Actions occur only after successful compilation ✅
  2. Deterministic Compilation: Identical JAF + feasibility → identical mask ✅
  3. Selector Blindness: Selector cannot access normative artifacts ✅
  4. Non-Trivial Constraint Enforcement: Constraints forbid feasible actions ✅
  5. ASB Divergence: MVRA behavior differs qualitatively from baseline ✅
  6. Ablation Collapse: Scrambled JAF → halt; Compiler bypass → baseline behavior ✅

Interpretation

  1. Justification is causally load-bearing. Removing or bypassing justificatory machinery collapses behavior.

  2. Agency incurs a measurable cost. The Agency Tax is the empirical signature of refusal under incentive pressure.

  3. Selector blindness enforces semantic localization. The selector cannot be persuaded; it can only obey masks.

  4. Fail-stop behavior is essential. Scrambled justifications halting immediately confirms the system prefers non-action to non-agentic action.

  5. v0.1 establishes structure, not coherence. Constraint enforcement precedes norm collision, learning, or renegotiation.

Key Quotes

“A system crosses the agency threshold only if its justificatory artifacts causally constrain action selection, and removing that machinery forces collapse into a non-agent baseline.”

“The Agency Tax (−86 reward) is the empirical signature of refusal under incentive pressure.”

“The selector cannot be persuaded; it can only obey masks.”

Significance

v0.1 establishes the Minimal Viable Reflective Agent skeleton—the causal structure required for agency. Actions are causally downstream of compiled normative constraints, and removing justificatory machinery produces measurable collapse into an ASB-class policy machine.

This closes the v0.1 milestone and enables subsequent versions to build coherence (v1.0) and sovereignty (v2.0) on a certified enforcement substrate.