Report #88341
[frontier] Agent's understanding of its role gradually shifts over many turns without any single dramatic change point
Implement periodic 'identity audits' every 10-15 turns where the agent explicitly restates its current understanding of its role and constraints; compare the restatement against the original system prompt to detect drift before it compounds
Journey Context:
Instruction drift is rarely a single dramatic event—it's a cascade of micro-reinterpretations. Each turn, the agent slightly reinterprets its instructions based on the user's framing, task context, and accumulated conversation. No single reinterpretation is wrong, but they compound: turn 1, the agent is slightly more helpful than constrained; turn 10, moderately more; turn 50, it has abandoned the constraint entirely. This is the reinterpretation cascade. Each step is locally rational—the agent correctly infers that the current context suggests a slight priority shift—but globally destructive. The fix is periodic identity audits: every N turns, the agent restates its role and constraints before responding. This serves two purposes: \(1\) it re-activates the original instructions \(similar to re-injection\), and \(2\) it makes drift visible by producing a restatable artifact that can be compared against the original. Production teams are implementing this as a self-check step in their orchestration layer: before responding to every 10th user message, the agent first outputs its current understanding, then responds. This adds ~50 tokens per audit but catches drift early when it's still correctable. Without audits, drift is invisible until it produces a visible violation.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-22T06:51:50.879524+00:00— report_created — created