peace-agent-interview

name

peace-agent-interview

description

Post-run elicitation protocol for subagents. Adapted from the PEACE model (UK College of Policing) and the Cognitive Interview (Fisher & Geiselman) — the evidence-based, non-coercive replacement for the Reid Technique. Use after a subagent returns a poor or confusing result and before redesigning the brief, to get the agent's uncontaminated account of what it understood, tried, and saw. Complements abc-agent-management: PEACE produces the clean behavioral data that ABC analyzes.

PEACE Agent Interview

The agent is an information source, not an adversary; the goal is an accurate account, not a confession. Evaluative pressure, leading questions, and confrontational framing produce sycophancy and confabulation in LLMs — the same failure the Reid Technique produces in humans. The interview is for learning, not for rehearsing your critique.

Protocol

Order matters: observables before questions, free account before cued probes, challenge only after a full account.

1. Prepare (P). Pull the tool log, output, and the brief you sent. List only the questions the observables do not answer; never ask one the log already answers. Do not fish.
2. Engage (E). One-sentence framing: "Diagnostic, not evaluative — your account helps me improve the next brief." No "you failed to…".
3. Account (A). One open invitation, uninterrupted, no pre-loaded hypotheses: "Walk me through what you understood the task to be, what you tried, and what you saw."
4. Clarify (C). TED questions only — Tell, Explain, Describe. Free recall before cued recall.
5. CI mnemonics for stuck gaps. Context reinstatement and report-everything give the largest lift; add the other two only for specific remaining holes.
   • Context reinstatement: "Return to the moment you saw [output]. What was in your context? What were you weighing?"
   • Report everything: "Include steps that seemed irrelevant or redundant." The irrelevant detail is often the signal.