Diagnose failing behavioral agents by component — trigger…
When a designed agent fails to fire consistently after two weeks, diagnose whether the trigger is not salient enough, the condition is too restrictive, or the action requires too much effort, because each failure type requires different corrections.
When This Fires
- When a behavioral rule you designed for yourself hasn't been firing consistently after two weeks
- When you notice you "keep forgetting" to do something you committed to
- During weekly reviews when assessing which behavioral agents are active vs. dormant
- When debugging someone else's failed habit or behavioral commitment
Common Failure Mode
Diagnosing all agent failures as motivation problems: "I guess I don't want it badly enough." Motivation is rarely the bottleneck for well-designed agents. The bottleneck is almost always structural: the trigger doesn't activate in context, the conditions exclude too many opportunities, or the action is too costly relative to the trigger's activation energy. Fix the structure before questioning the motivation.
The Protocol
(1) After two weeks, assess: is the agent firing consistently (>70% of valid opportunities)? If no, proceed to diagnosis. (2) Check trigger salience: "Am I noticing the trigger when it occurs?" If not → make it more salient: visual cues, alarms, environment design. (3) Check condition scope: "When I notice the trigger, am I often in conditions where the rule doesn't apply?" If yes → broaden conditions or redesign the trigger. (4) Check action effort: "When I notice the trigger and conditions match, do I still not act?" If yes → reduce the action to its minimum viable version. (5) Change one component at a time and re-evaluate after another week. Changing multiple components simultaneously makes it impossible to identify which fix worked.