University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

An epistemic gap is an execution failure condition in an autonomous agent where relevant domain knowledge, tool guidance, or an appropriate method is unavailable at the critical decision point. Unlike procedural failures where the agent possesses but fails to execute a procedure, an epistemic gap reflects a lack of necessary contextual or task information. In stateful agent runtimes, this gap is targeted at the harness layer by state-local entry hooks (such as `in_hook` routines) that reactivate relevant domain context, documentation, or tool guidance precisely at the phase where it becomes actionable.

Epistemic Gap in Autonomous Agent Execution

How does an epistemic gap fundamentally differ from a procedural failure in autonomous agent execution?

In stateful agent runtimes, state-local entry hooks target epistemic gaps by reactivating relevant domain context or tool guidance precisely at the phase where it becomes actionable.

Long-horizon agent execution failures are structured into three distinct operational gaps, each mapped to a specific control intervention in a stateful harness runtime:

1. **Epistemic Gap**: Relevant knowledge or methods are unavailable at the decision point; targeted by state-local context and entry hooks (`in_hook`) that reintroduce phase-specific guidance.
2. **Procedural-Compliance Gap**: An active procedure is left incomplete or not adhered to within a run; targeted by checked transitions, contract boundaries, and pre-commit checks (`before_transfer`) that block invalid handoffs.
3. **Procedural-Memory Gap**: Lessons diagnosed in earlier executions fail to be retained across runs; targeted by versioned practices and reusable runbook rules that accumulate procedural experience outside model weights.

Mapping Operational Gaps to Runtime Control Points

An epistemic gap is an execution failure condition where what three types of information or guidance are unavailable to the agent at a critical decision point?

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