Classification

Mapping Operational Gaps to Runtime Control Points

Long-horizon agent execution failures are structured into three distinct operational gaps, each mapped to a specific control intervention in a stateful harness runtime:

  1. Epistemic Gap: Relevant knowledge or methods are unavailable at the decision point; targeted by state-local context and entry hooks (in_hook) that reintroduce phase-specific guidance.
  2. Procedural-Compliance Gap: An active procedure is left incomplete or not adhered to within a run; targeted by checked transitions, contract boundaries, and pre-commit checks (before_transfer) that block invalid handoffs.
  3. Procedural-Memory Gap: Lessons diagnosed in earlier executions fail to be retained across runs; targeted by versioned practices and reusable runbook rules that accumulate procedural experience outside model weights.

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Updated 2026-09-21

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Prep Sessions

Long-Horizon Agent Reliability: Stateful Scaffolding and Runtime Verification @ University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Ch.1 Foundations and Operational Challenges - Long-Horizon Agent Reliability: Stateful Scaffolding and Runtime Verification @ University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Operational Gaps in Long-Horizon Agent Execution - Long-Horizon Agent Reliability: Stateful Scaffolding and Runtime Verification @ University of Michigan - Ann Arbor