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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. ...

October 22, 2026 · 8 min · Zelina
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Tile by Tile: Why LLMs Still Can't Plan Their Way Out of a 3×3 Box

A board game should not embarrass a frontier model. That is the uncomfortable charm of the 8-puzzle. It has no hidden information, no vague user intent, no messy database schema, no ambiguous policy exception, and no client saying “just make it pop.” It is a 3×3 grid with eight tiles and one blank space. Slide adjacent tiles into the blank. Reach the goal state. Done. ...

November 27, 2025 · 15 min · Zelina