When Old Instructions Outlive Their Authority
TL;DR for operators An AI agent can retain every instruction in a conversation and still execute the wrong task. The problem becomes acute when users replace requirements, withdraw constraints, or revise decisions on which earlier work depended. A controlled study introduces IntentFlux, a benchmark that measures this failure under changing user instructions.1 In a turn-matched experiment, mean task score falls from 0.734 without revisions to 0.469 with revisions. Additional conversation length alone cannot explain the difference. ...