docs: add HITL discussion — Wiggum Breaks as formal autonomy boundary

New subsection in Discussion framing Wiggum Breaks as the formal boundary
between autonomous and human-supervised operation. Derives HITL from
convergence theory rather than pre-defined approval gates. Covers
oscillation, divergence, and repeated shadow detection as provably
unproductive conditions that trigger human escalation.
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2026-04-08 05:21:20 +02:00
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@@ -733,6 +733,70 @@ toward specific cognitive orientations---but the shadow mechanism prevents them
from drifting too far, maintaining a productive operating range analogous to from drifting too far, maintaining a productive operating range analogous to
what \citeauthor{lu2026assistant} achieve through activation capping. what \citeauthor{lu2026assistant} achieve through activation capping.
\subsection{Wiggum Breaks as Human-in-the-Loop Boundaries}
A central question in autonomous agent systems is: \emph{when should the
system stop acting and ask a human?} Most frameworks treat this as an
implementation detail---a timeout, a retry limit, an exception handler.
ArcheFlow treats it as a first-class architectural concept through the
\emph{Wiggum Break}.
The Wiggum Break defines the \textbf{formal boundary between autonomous and
human-supervised operation}. It is not a failure mode; it is the system's
\emph{designed} response to situations where autonomous resolution is
provably unproductive:
\begin{itemize}
\item \textbf{Oscillation} (finding present $\to$ absent $\to$ present)
indicates a genuine tension in the review criteria that no amount of
cycling will resolve---only human judgment about which criterion takes
priority.
\item \textbf{Divergence} (convergence score $< 0.5$ for two consecutive
cycles) indicates that the implementation is getting worse with each
iteration---the agents lack the context or capability to solve the
problem, and continuing wastes resources.
\item \textbf{Repeated shadow detection} (same dysfunction three times)
indicates that the corrective action framework has exhausted its
options---the task structure is incompatible with the assigned archetype,
and a human must re-scope.
\end{itemize}
This framing inverts the typical HITL paradigm. Rather than asking
``how much autonomy should the system have?'' and pre-defining approval
gates, ArcheFlow asks ``under what conditions is autonomy
\emph{provably unproductive}?'' and derives the HITL boundary from
convergence theory. The system runs autonomously by default and escalates
only when it can demonstrate---through quantitative metrics, not
heuristics---that continued autonomous operation will not improve the
outcome.
This approach has three advantages over pre-defined approval gates:
\begin{enumerate}
\item \textbf{Adaptive autonomy}: Simple tasks never trigger a Wiggum
Break; complex tasks trigger one quickly. The HITL boundary adapts to
task difficulty without manual configuration.
\item \textbf{Auditable escalation}: Every Wiggum Break emits a
\texttt{wiggum.break} event with the trigger condition, run state, and
unresolved findings. The human receives not just a request for help,
but a structured summary of \emph{why} autonomous resolution failed
and what specifically needs their judgment.
\item \textbf{Minimal interruption}: Pre-defined gates (``approve every
PR'', ``review every design'') interrupt the human on tasks the system
could have handled autonomously. Convergence-derived breaks interrupt
only when the system has evidence that it cannot proceed productively.
\end{enumerate}
The Wiggum Break thus operationalizes a principle from resilience
engineering: the system should be \emph{autonomy-seeking} (preferring to
resolve issues itself) but \emph{escalation-ready} (able to produce a
useful handoff when self-resolution fails). The quality of the handoff---not
just the fact of escalation---is what makes HITL effective.
\subsection{Limitations} \subsection{Limitations}
\begin{enumerate} \begin{enumerate}