Spot preference cycles in agent plans

An agent plan favors placing a birdbath beside a hedge rather than beneath an arbor. Later, it favors the arbor rather than a veranda. Then it favors the veranda rather than the hedge. Each sentence has a reason. Together, they take the reader back to the option where the reading began.

This article invents Jane Doe and the passages she reads. Her agent has written a plan for placing a birdbath, but she is reading the plan on the page, without moving the birdbath. The .md explainer describes this kind of file.

Keep the reason beside each preference

The invented plan gives Jane Doe these passages:

Placing the birdbath beside the hedge is preferable to placing it beneath the arbor because the hedge shelters it from wind.

Placing the birdbath beneath the arbor is preferable to placing it on the veranda because the arbor shades it at noon.

Placing the birdbath on the veranda is preferable to placing it beside the hedge because the veranda means a shorter walk for refilling it.

Write each comparison in your own prose, including both options and the reason given. Jane Doe writes that the hedge is preferred to the arbor for shelter from wind; the arbor is preferred to the veranda for shade at noon; the veranda is preferred to the hedge for a shorter walk when refilling the birdbath.

Leaving out the reasons would hide the part she needs to examine. Writing only that the agent favors the hedge, arbor and veranda would also discard which option each preference is against. Preserve both sides of each comparison.

These comparisons use short prose passages. Read about code blocks in Markdown for fenced text; the passages here remain unfenced.

Follow the comparisons until you return

Begin with the hedge. The first passage favors the hedge over the arbor. Continue from the arbor: the second passage favors the arbor over the veranda. Continue from the veranda: the third passage favors the veranda over the hedge. That last comparison brings Jane Doe back to the hedge, where she began.

The return matters. If the plan stopped after the first two passages, those passages would not yet establish this loop. And if the last passage preferred the veranda to the arbor, it would dispute an earlier comparison without creating the same path back to the hedge.

Read the option names carefully as you follow them. Here, the hedge option means placing the birdbath beside the same hedge in every passage. The arbor and veranda options each mean the same placement in every passage too. Nothing in the invented text says that the birdbath or the three places changed between comparisons.

If your plan does describe a changed situation, keep that detail attached too. A preference for a different birdbath under different circumstances cannot simply be treated as another comparison among the original options. Establish what the passages actually compare before calling their return a cycle.

Locate the shift in what matters

Now reread the reasons. The hedge is favored for shelter from wind. The arbor is favored for shade at noon. The veranda is favored for a shorter walk when refilling the birdbath.

The plan moves from shelter from wind, to shade at noon, to a shorter walk for refilling. The reason that makes one option preferable is not carried through the other comparisons. There is no stated priority among these aims.

Jane Doe need not dismiss any of the aims to describe the problem. Shelter, shade and the walk for refilling can all matter when placing a birdbath. The unresolved part is which aim decides this particular placement when they favor different options.

Avoid filling that silence with your own assumption. The last preference does not gain priority merely by appearing last. Nor does the first reason become decisive merely because it introduced the discussion. Find the passage that explicitly places one aim above another. In these passages, that wording is absent.

Put the competing reasons into one question

Her question to the separate agent can stay tied to the passages: "You favor the hedge for shelter from wind, the arbor for shade at noon, and the veranda for a shorter walk when refilling. For this same birdbath, which reason should decide when those aims conflict?"

That question does more than ask the agent to pick again. The missing priority behind that pick is the subject of her question. Another preference with another appealing reason could leave the original loop intact.

An invented clarification could read:

For this birdbath, a shorter walk for refilling matters more than shelter from wind or shade at noon. I therefore favor placing it on the veranda.

The added prose gives Jane Doe a stated basis for the recommendation. Against the earlier preferences, this clarification sets shelter and shade below a shorter walk for refilling. She has not moved the birdbath or established that this aim suits her needs; she has identified the aim on which the recommendation now rests.

If the agent instead repeats the three preferences without naming a deciding reason, leave the recommendation unresolved. Repetition does not supply the missing priority.

Retain the loop when you describe the plan

A reading of the original plan can say that the hedge is preferred to the arbor, the arbor to the veranda, and the veranda to the hedge, with a different reason attached to each comparison. That account preserves the difficulty without turning it into a settled recommendation.

For a separate account saved as Markdown, consider these file naming ideas. Keep the original passages apart from your own reading so that a later clarification does not appear to have been present from the start.

End the reading when you can name the return, the changing reasons and the unresolved priority, or point to new prose that supplies that priority. The work here is reading what the plan says before accepting its recommendation.

Where Sashmark fits

Reading Markdown, then editing its text, is the planned desktop role for Sashmark. It's in development. No part of that purpose puts AI within the app. Interpreting the writing stays with you; clarification belongs with the separate agent that wrote it.