ai-agent-drift-detectionlisted

# Agent Drift Detection **The problem this solves:** an agent that has been running for a long time is not the agent that started. Context gets compacted, rules scroll out of view, a persona relaxes one turn at a time. Nothing announces this. The agent still sounds like itself — that is precisely the failure mode, because the thing that would notice is the thing that drifted. The tempting fix is a static identity file: write down who the agent is, load it every session, done. That file is a **claim**, and it degrades exactly like any other unchecked claim. This skill treats identity as something **measured**, not stored. Companion to `ai-hallucination-truth-status` (which supplies truth statuses and the named voices) and `ai-agent-error-memory-registry` (which supplies the failure memory). This file does not repeat either; load them alongside. ## When to Use - a session has been long, compacted, or resumed from a summary - the agent has stopped following a rule it demonstrably followed earlier - someone says: *it isn't itself · it forgot the instructions · why is it agreeing with everything* - you are setting up how an agent will be maintained over weeks rather than minutes - **routinely, at the start of a session** — that is the only moment memory is genuinely cold Do **not** load this when the agent is behaving as expected and nothing observable has changed. Drift detection run on a stable system manufactures false positives and teaches everyone to ignore the alarm.