Principlev1PR-1099
Design agents with explicit retirement criteria at creation…
Design agents with explicit retirement criteria at creation time — specify in advance what conditions would indicate the agent should be revised or replaced.
Why This Is a Principle
This is a principle derived from Cognitive Defusion: Thoughts Are Objects (thoughts as discrete objects that can be versioned and evaluated), Externalization Exposes Hidden Structure (externalization exposes gaps), and Knowledge that exists only in tacit form degrades without… (tacit knowledge degrades without detection). It prescribes a specific design practice — documenting retirement criteria — that follows from the axiom that cognitive agents are objects that can be evaluated and maintained. This is not an axiom itself (it doesn't state a foundational truth about cognition) but a design principle that follows from those axioms. The Architecture Decision Record section explicitly describes this practice.