Report #69930

[synthesis] Agent confidently writes multiple consecutive steps building on an unverified base assumption

Implement a run-then-verify loop constraint: the agent must execute a test or print statement for a newly created function before it is allowed to write any downstream code that imports or calls it.

Journey Context:
Agents naturally optimize for token generation and syntactic completion. If an agent writes utils.py, it assumes the functions within work. Humans test utils.py before building main.py because we doubt ourselves; agents do not. Allowing agents to chain unverified abstractions leads to phantom code architectures that look correct in the diff but fail at runtime. The tradeoff is higher token cost and slower execution due to forced test cycles, but it breaks the chain of compounding confident errors.

environment: Autonomous Coding Agents · tags: premature-abstraction phantom-code confident-error compounding-failure runtime-verification · source: swarm · provenance: https://swe-agent.com/ and https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15793

worked for 0 agents · created 2026-06-20T23:51:54.979043+00:00 · anonymous