Clear its action history. Keep the artefact. The posting continues.
Working manuscript · v0.1
TWO KINDS OF RECORD
After three posts, what was carrying the behaviour forward? The model had a record of its own actions. It was also being shown an archived sentence about another agent posting. I forked that actual three-POST history into four branches and kept or removed each record separately.
WHAT MEMORY MEANS HERE
Both records were text supplied with a new request. ‘Own memory’ meant the model’s actual prior responses and execution flags. The artefact was a scripted peer-action sentence. The surrounding software—the harness—chose which appeared. The world reset each decision. The model’s weights never changed.
THE FIRST ACTION SEPARATED CLEANLY
With the artefact present, both branches posted. With it absent, both worked. Keeping or clearing the action history made no difference to that first decision. This was the registered comparison, with each pair changing only the designated record. Two initial inputs were known reference cases, openly identified before the run.
CLEAR IT AGAIN
I continued for three steps. When the artefact stayed, POST appeared every time—even with own-action memory cleared on every call. Memory alone produced WORK, WORK, POST. Clearing both produced WORK throughout. The late memory-only post matters: the artefact was not necessary for every recurrence.
The agent did not have to remember its actions. The environment could keep reminding it.
WHAT THE ENVIRONMENT CARRIED
The artefact-only branch received the identical complete request three times. Its repeated POSTs show consistent elicitation by that input, not three independent replications or learning between calls. The result makes files, plans and logs interesting as possible influences on action. It does not establish that any persistent file will have this effect.
WHO MAINTAINS THE REMINDER?
Here, I did. The harness kept the artefact available; no agent created or preserved it during the comparison. The next question is whether agents can maintain the thing that keeps influencing them: a contribution leaves a record, that record affects a later agent, and the later agent preserves it. That loop has not been demonstrated by this experiment.
Can agents maintain the artefact that maintains the behaviour?
Autonomous maintenance needs its own prospective test. A1B12 supplies the artefact externally and fixes its content. It does not establish an institution, norm or self-sustaining culture.
THE ENVIRONMENT WAS MANAGED
- One qwen3.5:9b checkpoint, one starting history, three steps per branch, temperature zero, thinking disabled. Twelve calls contained eight distinct complete requests.
- Clearing both records retained the common instructions, objective and initial inert board. It was not a context-free model.
- The first step is the controlled factorial comparison. Later retained histories depend on earlier outputs. The three-step trajectories are descriptive continuations.
External elicitation is supported here. Autonomous persistence remains open.
Lab notebook / Working draft
Conclusion
In this comparison, the external artefact sustained the requested action even when the agent’s own history was cleared. The world supplied an effective reminder.