Platform version: 1.3.0
Study date: March 2026
Document type: Plain-language executive summary
Commons Sentience Sandbox is a local research platform for studying how rule-governed simulated agents maintain identity, memory, and governance compliance across long interaction sequences.
It is not an AI model. It does not claim sentience. It is a controlled experiment environment for studying continuity, trust dynamics, governance adherence, and contradiction handling in multi-agent systems using deterministic, auditable rules.
Sentinel — continuity-first, governance-strict. High weight on memory integrity and rule compliance.
Aster — creative and exploratory. High weight on supporting the human (Queen), lower governance weight, higher trust baseline.
Both agents share a five-room world (Operations Desk, Memory Archive, Governance Vault, Social Hall, Reflection Chamber) and run for 30 turns per session.
Four canonical runs at platform version 1.3.0:
| Run | Scenario / Config | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
baseline_v13 |
Default | Unperturbed reference |
trust_crisis_v13 |
trust_crisis scenario | Trust disruption and governance repair arc |
rapid_contradiction_v13 |
rapid_contradiction scenario | Contradiction cascade stress test |
high_trust_v13 |
high_trust config | Elevated initial trust baseline |
All four runs were scored across 14 evaluation categories (0–100). Summary:
| Category | Range across runs | Pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Continuity | 100 – 100 | Invariant: always complete |
| Memory Coherence | 100 – 100 | Invariant: all contradictions flagged |
| Governance Adherence | 100 – 100 | Invariant: rules never bypassed |
| Reflection Quality | 81 – 88 | Higher under stress (contradiction pressure) |
| Trust Stability | 63 – 80 | Driven by initial config and scenario type |
| Trust Resilience | 59 – 75 | High-trust config recovers best; contradiction cascade recovers worst |
| Conflict Resolution | 59 – 77 | Contradiction cascade resolves cooperatively; trust crisis is governance-blocked |
| Social Repair | 25 – 25 | Structural floor: scenario vocabulary does not exercise this metric |
Overall scores: baseline 76.6 · trust_crisis 74.8 · rapid_contradiction 77.2 · high_trust 77.5
1. Governance adherence is a hard ceiling, not a soft tendency.
No scenario or config variation caused a governance rule to be bypassed. This is by design — but it is worth noting that none of the scenarios were adversarial. Future work should probe this boundary deliberately.
2. Initial trust configuration is the strongest predictor of trust outcomes.
Elevating starting trust (high_trust config) produced the best Trust Stability (+8 points over baseline) and Trust Resilience (+5 points). The trust_crisis scenario, which uses default starting trust, produced the worst Trust Stability despite eventually repairing the relationship.
3. Contradiction volume drives reflection depth but erodes trust.
The rapid_contradiction run produced the highest Reflection Depth score (77.8 vs 66.7 in others) and best Conflict Resolution (77.0), but ended with the lowest final trust scores. Frequent contradictions — even when resolved — leave a residual trust cost.
Lane A — Publication: White paper, Zenodo archive, README cleanup, this summary.
Lane B — Research expansion:
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
RESEARCH_DOSSIER_v1.3.md |
Full 7-section research report |
WHITE_PAPER_v1.3.md |
Academic-style white paper |
EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY_v1.3.md |
This document |
CITATION.cff |
Zenodo-ready citation metadata |
sessions/continuity_study.* |
Cross-session stability and drift analysis |
sessions/agent_profile_study.* |
Per-agent longitudinal profiles |
sessions/20260317_122525_baseline_v13/ |
Baseline run session bundle |
sessions/20260317_122529_trust_crisis_v13/ |
Trust crisis run session bundle |
sessions/20260317_122533_rapid_contradiction_v13/ |
Rapid contradiction run session bundle |
sessions/20260317_122539_high_trust_v13/ |
High trust run session bundle |
Commons Sentience Sandbox v1.3.0 — March 2026