What is cognitive distortions agents?

Cognitive distortions agents is a concept in personal epistemology: Every agent embeds assumptions about the world — the schema it uses must be accurate.

Example: You built an agent for handling criticism at work: 'When someone challenges my idea in a meeting, assume they are attacking my competence, and defend the idea immediately.' This agent fires reliably. It also destroys collaborative relationships. The schema it operates on — 'challenges equal attacks' — is wrong. Replace the schema with 'challenges are stress tests for the idea, not evaluations of the person,' and the same trigger produces a completely different action: listen, ask a clarifying question, improve the idea.

This concept is part of Phase 21 (Agent Fundamentals) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for agent fundamentals.