Real Agents: Invariants, Falsifiability, and Closed-Loop Intelligence
The word "agent" is having the kind of career most words only dream of. Today, it is a label stapled onto almost any workflow, like a "handcrafted" sticker on factory bread. But when we call everything an agent, we accidentally lower our standards for systems that change the world.
Real Agents is a rigorous engineering guide for building systems that survive contact with the real world. It argues that a real agent is defined by its loop, not its transcript. Its competence is not its prose; its competence is its coupling to an environment.
If you are looking for prompt hacks, you will be disappointed. This book is about the engineering disciplines required to turn "agent theater" into reliable action systems:
Closed-Loop Intelligence: Why "multi-step" is not agency, and how to build systems that perceive, act, and verify.
Invariants & Constitutions: How to design a "hard shell" of safety rules that allow the "soft core" of intelligence to learn without becoming dangerous.
Falsifiability: How to replace "it looks reliable" with adversarial testing, replayable traces, and counterexample-driven development.
Control & Governance: Implementing authority boundaries, safe halting, and "do nothing" capabilities to prevent compounding errors.
From the "Agent Illusion" to deployment checklists, this field guide provides the architecture, metrics, and mental models needed to ship agents that can truly be trusted with authority.
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