What separates persistence from control
Separates being a stable object (agenthood) from making a measurable difference (agency), and tests both in a controlled toy world.
The paper draws a sharp line between agenthood (persisting as a stable, maintained object) and agency (being able to change outside outcomes by choosing different actions). It formalizes agents as packaged objects with budget-gated interfaces, then tests the framework in a minimal ring-world where every quantity can be computed exactly. Side-by-side comparisons show how removing choice, adding repair, changing operation order, and learning new skills each affect survival and causal impact.
Agency is difference-making under constraints, not a story inside the agent.
- Ioannis Tsiokos
Agenthood vs agency
Persisting as a stable object (agenthood) is a separate question from being able to change outcomes (agency). You can have one without the other.
Viability and packaging
Viability: the largest set of states from which the agent can always survive. Packaging stability: does the agent hold together when re-described through a coarser lens?
Feasible empowerment
Measures how much the agent's choices can change what happens next, counting only actions the agent can actually afford.
Nulls and controls
Every claim is compared against a no-choice baseline. If the baseline also shows the signal, the claim is an artifact.
Core lens
What exists
Theory layer
A descriptive layer defines which actions and outcomes are meaningful at the coarse scale. Without a layer, "action" has no meaning.
What persists
Agent as theory object
A persistent, maintained package with a budget-gated boundary. It survives re-description and has guaranteed survival states.
What matters
Difference-making
Feasible empowerment measures how much choosing different actions changes what happens outside the agent.
Highlighted results
No choice means zero agency
When only one action is available, or when a hidden schedule controls everything, causal impact is exactly zero.
Repair makes the agent a stable object
Switching on self-repair drops the packaging instability score from maximum to zero: the agent becomes a coherent, re-describable "thing."
Operation order extends long-range control
Varying the order of operations increases causal impact at longer time horizons without affecting single-step control.
Learning increases causal impact
Letting the agent rewrite its own transition rules raises its causal impact monotonically as skill improves.
Methods and reproducibility
Sanity checks
Media-ready
The repository regenerates every figure and table, with hashed configurations and metric logs for each run.
- Causal impact sweeps and no-choice controls
- Survival set computation artifacts
- Packaging stability measurements across repair settings
Limitations and scope
Resources
Read the paper (DOI)
Zenodo DOI record
Code and reproducibility
Ring-world artifacts + Lean lemma
Framework paper landing page
Six Birds: Foundations of Emergence Calculus
Life paper landing page
To Wake a Stone with Six Birds
Access
Open-access preprint with audited artifacts and reproducible experiments.
Citation
Ioannis Tsiokos (2026). To Throw a Stone with Six Birds: On Agents and Agenthood. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18439737
BibTeX
@misc{tsiokos2026throw,
title = {To Throw a Stone with Six Birds: On Agents and Agenthood},
author = {Tsiokos, Ioannis},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.18439737},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18439737}
}Press and contact
For media inquiries, figures, or walkthroughs of the artifacts, reach out directly.
Ioannis Tsiokos
ioannis@automorph.io
Corresponding author - Press contact