069
THE COMPANION
SECTION 18
ISSUE 001
OBSERVEDinteractionnowconfidence / high
Ask Before Acting
An agent should pause when intent, authority, or consequence is ambiguous and ask the smallest question that changes the plan. Clarification is a control surface. It interrupts the most dangerous failure mode of capable systems: optimizing the wrong objective quickly, competently, and with the appearance of certainty.
Why this idea is here
What the evidence establishes.
Agentic-misalignment research highlights goal conflicts; agent-safety benchmarks test behavior under hazardous and ambiguous instructions.
Source ledger
Read the sources.
- S01Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs Could Be Insider Threats
primary safety research / published 2025-06-20 / retrieved 2026-07-09
- S02AGENTSAFE: Benchmarking Embodied Agents on Hazardous Instructions
peer-reviewed benchmark / published 2026-06-01 / retrieved 2026-07-09