Papers · Preprint · v2
To Throw a Stone with Six Birds: On Agents and Agenthood
Measuring agency without goals, utilities or a little person inside.
In plain words
An agent is treated as a theory object: a maintained package inside a layer with an interface that is gated by a ledger. Agenthood is the layer existing and persisting. Agency is interventions at the interface changing outside futures.
Three metrics make this measurable: viability kernels, feasible empowerment and the idempotence defect of a packaging map.
In a small ring world, null regimes give zero bits, so no false positives. Enabling repair collapses the defect. Learning a skill raises empowerment. A Lean anchor formalizes the viability fixed point.
What it shows
- Agenthood separated from agency.
- Four auditable separations in matched ablations.
- Hash traceable, deterministic experiments.
What it does not claim
No claim that any real system is or is not an agent.
Cite
Tsiokos, I. (2026). To Throw a Stone with Six Birds: On Agents and Agenthood. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18451887