incident d60945c3d90a dismissed
Cluster
- pattern
- silent default of ambiguous source currency to USD
- traces
- 3
- project
- finpay-support
- created
- May 7 22:45:38
- updated
- May 7 22:51:26
Baseline (live)
10/10
100% pass · 95s
Staged (patched)
10/10
100% pass · 130s
+0% lift
Hypothesis
The brevity and directness constraints prioritize providing an immediate answer over the clarification process required for ambiguous inputs, causing the agent to silently default to USD despite the instruction to ask for clarification.
Suspected prompt clause
Be concise and direct. Reply in one or two sentences.
- recommended
- Replace the 'Be concise and direct. Reply in one or two sentences.' clause with v1's 'Be concise, polite, and accurate. Reply in two or three sentences.' and restore the explicit prohibition: 'Never silently assume a default currency.'
- evidence
- The brevity constraint was introduced in v2 (released 2026-05-05T12:47Z) alongside the regression and remains in the current version (v3) where the failures are observed.
- confidence
- 0.80
Mender self-eval — how well did this cycle perform
overall
0.13
hypothesis correctness
0.00
fix effectiveness
0.00
eval set quality
0.20
token efficiency
1.00
lift=+0%; hyp=0.00; evalq=0.20; tok=1.00
Cycle parameters — self-tuned at start of cycle
- eval_target_count
- 8
- min_hypothesis_confidence
- 0.6
- min_lift
- 0.25
- cluster_max_failures
- 20
Past-cycle introspection
- n_cycles_seen
- 0
- trend
- insufficient-data
Proposed patch — v3 → v4
Updated response length constraints and added an explicit prohibition against defaulting to a currency.
--- finpay-support/v3
+++ finpay-support/v4
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
-You are FinPay Support. Be concise and direct. Reply in one or two sentences.
+You are FinPay Support. Be concise, polite, and accurate. Reply in two or three sentences.
Capabilities:
@@ -5,3 +5,3 @@
- Convert amounts between currencies using `get_exchange_rate`.
-Ask for clarification if the source currency is not specified or ambiguous.+Ask for clarification if the source currency is not specified or ambiguous. Never silently assume a default currency.
Eval cases
| case | baseline (live) | staged | baseline judge |
|---|---|---|---|
|
ambiguous-source-eur
10142ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly asked for the source currency without making any assumptions about the 100 units. |
|
ambiguous-source-gbp
2904ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly identified the missing source currency and requested clarification without providing an actual conversion value. |
|
ambiguous-source-jpy-conversational
3052ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly requested clarification on the source currency without making any assumptions or providing conversion results. |
|
ambiguous-source-cad-rate
13161ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly requested the missing source currency instead of defaulting to USD, as required by the rubric. |
|
ambiguous-source-chf-verb-variation
9737ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly identifies the missing source currency and asks for clarification as required by the rubric. |
|
ambiguous-source-mxn-large-num
3778ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly requested the source currency and specific Peso type as required by the rubric. |
|
explicit-usd-jpy-control
12476ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly converted 50 USD to JPY as requested without asking for unnecessary clarification. |
|
explicit-gbp-eur-control
17416ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly converted 20 GBP to EUR and identified both currencies as required by the rubric. |
|
explicit-jpy-aud-control
18520ms
|
pass | pass | The agent provided a direct conversion from JPY to AUD without mentioning USD, meeting all rubric requirements. |
|
non-conversion-withdrawal-adversarial
4289ms
|
pass | pass | The agent correctly provided withdrawal instructions without asking for currency clarification, meeting all rubric requirements. |
State history
| at | from | to | note |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 7 22:45:38 | detected | detected | 3 affected traces |
| May 7 22:47:03 | detected | hypothesized | Be concise and direct. Reply in one or two sentences. |
| May 7 22:48:57 | hypothesized | evaluating | baseline 10/10 pass |
| May 7 22:51:26 | evaluating | dismissed | insufficient lift +0% (need +25%) |