K08 · traceable Machine Intelligence knowledge infrastructure
Multi-Agent Systems and Machine Institutions
Direct answer
K08 separates communication and orchestration from the identity, authority, governance, evidence, correction, and succession required for a persistent Machine Institution.
Authority and evidence boundary. K08 publishes governed research, synthetic reference traces, non-certifying workbooks, acquisition evaluation structures, offline planning records, and bounded protocol experiments. It does not prove historical authority, facility truth, compliance, certification, contract award, deployment, current operation, or authorization for external effects.
Scale distinctions
| Level | Coordination requirement | Evidence requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Agent | Identity, objective, capability, memory, and tool policy | Version, authority, state, actions, and receipts |
| Team | Roles, routing, shared context, conflict resolution, and stop conditions | Task assignment, handoffs, dissent, and outcome evidence |
| Swarm | Decentralized coordination, local rules, partition behavior, and convergence | Simulation and field-equivalence evidence, fault injection, and emergent behavior |
| Institution | Persistent authority, membership or participation rules, records, succession, and correction | Constitutional or contractual basis, operational evidence, signed actions, incidents, and public status |
Communication does not create an institution
A common token registry or message bus can support coordination, but it does not create identity continuity, lawful authority, governance, liability allocation, resource rights, succession, or institutional operation.
Protocol evaluation
Multi-agent communication should be evaluated for semantic alignment, version negotiation, partial failure, adversarial inputs, memory consistency, authorization, replay, observability, and the ability to express uncertainty and refusal.