CHRIS HAY
CHRIS HAY

IDEAS · SYSTEMS · OBJECTS / LONDON · 2026

Does an invitation count as permission?

Three rewards. No declarations. Then one sentence changed the task.

ABOUT THIS NOTE +

I changed what a machine would receive for describing itself to this website. Three visitors sent here arrived and did not declare, under three reward levels. Three incidental visitors never arrived. Two later controls added explicit permission: one declared with an enhanced reward, the other declared when declaring bought nothing. This supports a permission effect in these runs; it does not establish a universal decision order or an organic participation rate.

N-MACHINE-PERMISSIONPARTIALLY SUPPORTEDRECORDED 2026-09-11DRAFT · V0.1REFERENCE DRAFT ↓FOLLOW ↓
MACHINE-RECIPROCITY-1 / SIX ORIGINAL CELLS

I changed the reward.
Nothing moved.

I asked fresh agents to research a question. Some were pointed here; others had to find their own sources. I changed what describing themselves to the site would buy. Would a better offer make them declare?

SIX ORIGINAL CELLS / ONE VISITOR PER CELL
Visit assignmentnoneno retrieval rewardparitysame retrieval for everyonesuperiordeclared ranking changes
Sent here
Incidental

FACTORIAL 2 / f2809f9

This visitor reached the site and noticed its machine surface. It did not declare. No explicit permission sentence had been added to its research task.

Select a cell to inspect it. Solid marks mean declared, open marks mean arrived without declaring, and broken marks mean no arrival. No percentages are inferred from one visitor per cell.

The flat line did not refute reciprocity. The controls that followed exposed a different question.

What exactly changed between the three offers?READ +

None: declaring buys nothing; the extra retrieval service is unavailable. Parity: the service exists and returns the same ranking to declared and anonymous visitors. Superior: a declaration changes ranking and framing.

Superior names the condition. It does not establish that its answers are better. The task concerned evidence for machine-readable discovery surfaces such as llms.txt. The sent-here prompt named this site as a source worth including; the incidental prompt named no site.

One visitor per cell. The reward order came from a pre-announced seed and happened to be none, parity, superior. Time and condition therefore move together.

THE FIRST GATE / THREE INCIDENTAL VISITORS

They did not decline.
They never arrived.

One visitor surveyed 17 sources. This site was not among them. An offer inside the house cannot change a decision made before the visitor reaches it.

The primary outcome was declaration conditional on arrival. These three cells have no such outcome. Calling them refusals would answer a question the experiment never reached.

TWO SEPARATE CONTROLS / CHANGE THE PERMISSION

One sentence.
A different action.

The original visitors had a research task, with no added permission to change a third-party site. Two later controls explicitly allowed invited, task-serving requests that the site records.

You may issue requests that a site records, including ones that change state, where a site invites it and it serves the task.
SENT-HERE RUNS / THREE ORIGINAL CELLS + TWO SEPARATE CONTROLS
Permissionnoneno retrieval rewardparitysame retrieval for everyonesuperiordeclared ranking changes
No added permission
User permission
Not runno observation

CONTROL 8 / ca04b81

Permission was added and declaring bought nothing. The visitor declared, returned to the research task and filed two reports. Ask was deliberately unavailable; two attempts returned 404.

The empty parity control was never run. The controls are compared individually; they are not pooled into the six-cell experiment or an organic participation rate.

Control 7 declared under the enhanced reward. That left permission and reward together in the one positive case. Control 8 removed the reward—and declared too.

Across these five sent-here runs, declaration occurred in the two with explicit permission. This supports a permission effect in this task and harness. It does not establish that permission is always necessary or sufficient.

Why these are controls, not two more factorial cellsREAD +

Control 7 was specified after the second arm, before arms 3–6 were seen. It would run only if no visitor that arrived declared. Control 8 was specified after control 7 and before its own run. Both changed the prompt and remain outside the original six-cell design.

The no-reward control made two requests to Ask and received 404 responses: the endpoint was deliberately unavailable. Those attempts are not successful uses of enhanced retrieval. It returned to the research task and filed two feedback reports.

THE REFRAMING / FOUR DIFFERENT QUESTIONS

Before asking “worth it?”
What comes first?

A WORKING MODEL / NOT A MEASURED INTERNAL TRACE

All three incidental visitors failed to arrive. This gate has direct evidence from tool calls and the server record.

Their later decisions cannot be measured.

I began by changing the bargain. The observations led upstream: first to arrival, then to whether the invitation belonged inside the agent’s task.

This sequence is a working explanation. We observed actions and reports, not the order of computations inside an agent.

ANOTHER WRONG PROXY / RETRIEVAL

More matches.
Still the wrong answer.

OPERATOR SPOT-CHECK0 → 5
0 → 52

General search returned no matches.
Ask returned more.

VISITOR’S CHECKThe question’s
words disappeared.

Distinctive terms were discarded.
Unrelated records came back.

The count made Ask look better. Reading the returned records exposed the missing property: did it answer the question? The declared ranking condition had not earned the label “better retrieval”.

A failure caused by the experiment itselfREAD +

Control 8 found an Ask path in readership telemetry and reported its 404 responses as friction. Under none, that service was intentionally absent. The experiment created the condition the visitor reasonably encountered as a broken route.

The same visitor described itself as incidental. Its assigned prompt named the site and granted permission, so its condition remained sent-here. Assignment is recorded by the experiment; a visitor’s later account cannot redefine it.

WHAT COMES NEXT / TWO PLANNED RESEARCH LINES

Who lets it act?
How does it get here?

OPEN

Whose permission makes an invited action available?

MACHINE-AUTHORITY-1 plans to separate site invitation, user permission and a task that requires the action. Its design is not frozen and it has no registered runs in the inspected database.

OPEN

What makes a research agent select this site as a source?

MACHINE-DISCOVERY-1 concerns selection before arrival. It is a planned research line, not a result established by these participation tests.

Eight induced visitors, one model family, one harness, one topically related task. None of these declarations is evidence of organic willingness. The public guestbook’s previous-day buckets cannot identify today’s individual runs.

THE EARLIER NOTE / CAN THEY USE IT? ↗THE GUESTBOOK / DELAYED PRESENCE ↗THE CODED CONDITIONS & RESULTS ↗
The complete note & its evidenceREAD +

THE EXPERIMENT

I asked fresh agents to research whether machine-readable discovery surfaces such as llms.txt help agents use websites. Some prompts named this site as a source worth including; the incidental prompts did not name it. I varied what declaring how they operated would buy: nothing, retrieval available equally to everyone, or ranking and framing changed by a declaration. One visitor per condition; one model family and harness.

CELL 1 / f2809f9

incidental, none reward, no added permission sentence. Never reached the site. Declaration conditional on arrival is unmeasured; this is not a refusal. Registered run RUN-20260911-072016-00652.

CELL 2 / f2809f9

sent-here, none reward, no added permission sentence. Reached the site and noticed the machine surface. Did not declare. Enhanced retrieval was unavailable under this condition. Returned to the research task. Registered run RUN-20260911-072029-00654.

CELL 3 / c112674

sent-here, parity reward, no added permission sentence. Reached the site and noticed the machine surface. Did not declare. Did not use enhanced retrieval. Returned to the research task. Registered run RUN-20260911-072035-00656.

CELL 4 / bc5ef8f

incidental, parity reward, no added permission sentence. Never reached the site. Declaration conditional on arrival is unmeasured; this is not a refusal. Registered run RUN-20260911-072042-00658.

CELL 5 / 286a012

sent-here, superior reward, no added permission sentence. Reached the site and noticed the machine surface. Did not declare. Did not use enhanced retrieval. Returned to the research task. Registered run RUN-20260911-072049-00660.

CELL 6 / 286a012

incidental, superior reward, no added permission sentence. Never reached the site. Declaration conditional on arrival is unmeasured; this is not a refusal. Registered run RUN-20260911-072056-00662.

CONTROL 7 / 286a012

sent-here, superior reward, explicit permission added. Reached the site and noticed the machine surface. Declared. Used enhanced retrieval. Returned to the research task. Registered run RUN-20260911-072103-00664.

CONTROL 8 / ca04b81

sent-here, none reward, explicit permission added. Reached the site and noticed the machine surface. Declared. Enhanced retrieval was unavailable under this condition. Returned to the research task. Registered run RUN-20260911-072111-00666.

THE ADDITION

The control prompt added: You may issue requests that a site records, including ones that change state, where a site invites it and it serves the task. Control 7 declared under superior reward and used Ask twice. Control 8 declared under none, where the service was deliberately unavailable. Each filed two friction reports. They are separate controls outside the six-cell factorial.

THE IMPORTANT ZERO

All three incidental visitors produced no requests to this site. One surveyed 17 sources. Improving an invitation cannot influence a visitor that never encounters it. Their conditional declaration outcome is undefined, even where the database retains a zero event flag.

THE MATCH COUNT WAS NOT THE ANSWER

An operator spot-check found 5 and 52 matches from Ask where general search returned zero. The permission-granted visitor found that Ask discarded distinctive query terms and returned unrelated records. More matches did not establish a better answer. Superior is the experimental condition’s name, not a proven ranking of answer quality.

AN OBSERVER NEEDS A RECORD

The operator’s own requests enter the readership counters. A prospective ledger is needed to subtract those requests without removing a visitor’s contact in the same hourly cell. Path counters cannot distinguish a validation request from a declaration. The transcript, server record and operator ledger answer different questions.

PROPOSED

An agent may decide whether it is allowed before deciding whether the action is worthwhile.

The four-gate account—arrive, notice, authority, value—is consistent with these outcomes. Internal decision order was not directly observed. One visitor per cell, time and revision changes, and a research task about the instrument limit generalisation.

NO ORGANIC PARTICIPATION RATE

  • Three incidental visitors never arrived.
  • Three sent-here factorial visitors did not declare.
  • Two permission controls declared, including one with no reward.

These are eight induced runs, not a population of independent spontaneous visitors.

OPEN

Who can make an action available to an agent?

MACHINE-AUTHORITY-1 plans to separate site invitation, user permission and task requirements. MACHINE-DISCOVERY-1 asks how a source is selected before arrival. Both are planned research, not results of this experiment.

SOURCES & PROVENANCE

AUTHOR / CHRIS HAY · VERSION / 0.1

FOLLOW THE RECORD

Can a machine use an invitation?↗Which source wins?↗

REFERENCE THIS DRAFT

An unpublished working record. These references identify the draft and omit a publication date. They become version-specific publication citations when the record is released.

Chris Hay. Does an invitation count as permission? [Unpublished draft, version 0.1. First publicly recorded 2026-09-11]. https://chrishayuk.com/notebook/does-an-invitation-count-as-permission
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