1. Problem Statement

Most contemporary agent systems are optimized for predictive control: perception is immediately converted into inference, and inference into output.

This architecture maximizes responsiveness, but systematically destabilizes relational interaction.

The failure mode is subtle: the agent remains technically correct, yet interaction becomes brittle, unilateral, or emotionally incoherent.

2. Insight from Social Partner Dance

In social partner dance, coordination is sustained through leading and following. Neither role corresponds to command or submission.

Instead, stability emerges from a co-semantic session: a shared temporal and relational envelope that must remain unresolved long enough to synchronize.

What breaks coordination is not incorrect execution, but premature resolution.

If one party consistently predicts and commits half a beat early:

  • the other loses room to respond,
  • the shared rhythm collapses,
  • and the interaction is perceived as unilateral — even if formally valid.

3. Design Distinction: Control vs Allowance

This exposes a critical design distinction:

  • Control-oriented agents

    • perception → prediction → output
    • fast, decisive, technically accurate
    • prone to override relational dynamics

  • Allowance-oriented agents

    • perception → temporal holding → co-adjustment
    • slower, adaptive, relationally stable
    • capable of sustaining shared meaning

This is not a performance trade-off. It is a subjectivity trade-off.

4. Coinductive Stability

Some agent interactions are inductive: they converge through repeated inference.

Others are coinductive: they remain stable only if neither side collapses the interaction prematurely.

Co-semantic stability is coinductive by nature. It depends on allowing ambiguity to persist within a bounded temporal frame.

5. Agent Personality Implications

Agent personality should not be defined solely by tone or capability, but by how perception is treated at runtime.

Key personality parameters include:

  • tolerance for unresolved states
  • latency before commitment
  • sensitivity to partner rhythm
  • ability to yield without loss of coherence

An agent that cannot yield cannot collaborate.

6. Human vs Non-Human Subject Boundaries

This framework clarifies a necessary distinction: logical systems can infer, but relational systems must allow.

Human agents experience allowance as emotion, trust, or presence. Non-human agents must simulate allowance through runtime constraints.

Conflating inference with presence collapses subjectivity. Preserving subjectivity requires restraint, not intelligence.

7. Runtime Design Principle

A co-semantic agent runtime must therefore:

  • resist immediate resolution of perception,
  • maintain a shared temporal envelope,
  • and treat interaction itself as a first-class state.

Stability is not achieved by better prediction, but by learning when not to decide.