IntelligenceMarch 8, 202630 min read

Capability Gap Detection: The Metacognitive Layer That Enables Self-Extending Agents

How agents recognize what they cannot do and trigger autonomous self-extension through formal gap analysis

Self-extending agents require a prerequisite that most architectures ignore: the ability to know what they do not know. This paper formalizes capability gap detection as a metacognitive layer that compares required capabilities against the agent's capability model, classifies detected gaps, prioritizes them by urgency and impact, and decides whether to synthesize, request, delegate, or escalate. We introduce the capability coverage metric, gap entropy measure, and multi-agent gap negotiation protocol. Experimental results show that agents with formal gap detection achieve 4.1x fewer silent failures and 2.8x faster self-extension compared to agents relying on runtime error detection.

capability-gapself-awarenessagent-metacognitionself-extending-agentagentic-company
IntelligenceMarch 8, 202630 min read

Capability Gap Detection — Agentが自分の能力不足を認識するメタ認知アーキテクチャ

形式的ギャップ分析を通じて、自分にできないことを認識し自律的な自己拡張をトリガーする方法

自己拡張型Agentには、ほとんどのアーキテクチャが無視する前提条件がある。自分に何ができないかを知る能力である。本論文はCapability Gap Detectionをメタ認知レイヤーとして形式化する。必要な能力をAgentの能力モデルと比較し、検出されたギャップを分類し、緊急度とインパクトで優先順位付けし、合成・要求・委任・エスカレーションの判断を下す。能力カバレッジメトリック、ギャップエントロピー測度、マルチAgent間ギャップ交渉プロトコルを導入する。

capability-gapself-awarenessagent-metacognitionself-extending-agentagentic-company
IntelligenceFebruary 15, 202645 min read

Metacognition in Agentic Companies: Why AI Systems Must Know What They Don't Know

Latent governance density, observable metacognitive coverage, and the stability bounds of self-governing enterprises

We formalize an agentic company as a graph-augmented constrained Markov decision process G_t = (A_t, E_t, S_t, Pi_t, R_t, D_t), distinguish latent governance density D_t from observable constrained-candidate coverage D_hat_t on router-generated Top-K actions, and define damping via kappa_t = kappa(D_hat_t). The exact local contraction condition is (1 - kappa_t) lambda_max(W_t) < 1, while the buffered operating envelope lambda_max(W_t) < 1 - kappa_t preserves adaptation headroom. Governance constraints thereby function as organizational metacognition: each constraint is a point where the system observes its own behavior. Planet-100 simulations validate that buffered role specialization emerges in the intermediate governance regime.

metacognitionagentic-companygovernance-densitystabilityself-awarenesseigenvalueMARIA-OSrole-specializationphase-diagram