The Saturation Trap and the Subjectivity of Intervention Timing: Why Affect-Based Triggers and LLM Judges Fail to Time Interventions on Autonomous Agents

arXiv:2606.04296 · cs.AI · Submitted 2026-06-02 · Read on arXiv

cs.AI

Submitted: 2026-06-02

Updated: 2026-10-09

Comments: v2: adds an erratum notice (decay term never executed in replays; the observer could not register recovery). Results otherwise unchanged. 12 pages, 5 tables. Code and data: https://github.com/2025eb1100268-tech/intervention-timing-saturation-trap

Code: https://github.com/2025eb1100268-tech/intervention-timing-saturation-trap

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• LLM judge — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• alpha — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• AI Agents — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accuracy — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Feature Extraction — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Frustration — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Trace — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• AgentSpec: Customizable Runtime Enforcement for Safe and Reliable LLM Agents
• Assessing Judging Bias in Large Reasoning Models: An Empirical Study
• ProbGuard: Proactive Runtime Monitoring for LLM Agent Safety via Probabilistic Prediction

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