Declaring the agent layer (who owns $Q$)
- Specify the agent/system, its model $Q$, sensors, actuators, goals, and constraints.
Closed loop and counterfactual sensitivity
- Demonstrate interventions that change future Texts.
- Design contrasts to reveal if the model’s predictions match realized data.
Model improvement metrics
- Predictive log‑loss on held‑out or next‑step data.
- KL divergence $D_{KL}(P \|\| Q_t)$ trends (with $P$ the source and $Q_t$ the agent model); negative free energy reductions.
Cost accounting
- Energy, time, bandwidth, memory; include in objective functions.
- Report Pareto fronts and robustness under budget changes.
Reporting standards
- Baselines: no‑feedback, random policies, fixed policies.
- Ablations: remove components (e.g., phase control) to quantify contribution.
- Misses: where the dual view failed or added nothing; refine the agent model first.
Further reading: Agency & Delegation, Research Directions, Glossary.