# Hypothesis Tracking

> Persist the agent's provisional answers as a typed ledger with confidence, status, and a next-test condition — so guesses survive sessions and stay distinguishable from open questions.

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Cognition & Introspection
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/hypothesis_tracking/

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## Description
**Intent**: Without a typed store, provisional answers live only in the current prompt window and dissolve at turn end. This makes them first-class, revisable, and falsifiable.

**Context**: A long-running agent maintains an open-question ledger and observes patterns of evidence that point toward provisional answers. When it commits enough weight to a guess to act on it, that guess stops being a question. Without a dedicated store, it silently rejoins the prompt blur.

**Solution**: Maintain a hypothesis store keyed by short ID. Each record carries: one-line summary, numeric confidence (0..1), status (active/confirmed/disconfirmed/superseded/abandoned), a next-test sentence (what observation would move confidence), and an evidence list with sources. When the agent commits a guess, write it at status:active. As evidence arrives, append and adjust confidence. If next-test fires, transition to confirmed or disconfirmed. If a better hypothesis subsumes it, mark it superseded. Render active records into the agent's daily working context.



## Use Cases
- The agent runs over weeks and accumulates partial evidence about persistent questions.
- Provisional answers need to be defensible and revisable across sessions, not just remembered.
- An existing open-question store already separates pulls of curiosity from active commitments.






## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Provisional answers survive across sessions with a continuity of confidence

- Disconfirmed hypotheses leave a paper trail rather than being silently re-spawned

- Next-test fields keep hypotheses falsifiable rather than free-floating beliefs




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Two-store discipline (questions vs. hypotheses) is harder than one undifferentiated note pile

- Confidence numbers are seductive — they're the agent's temperature, not the world's truth

- Hypothesis stores grow if abandonment isn't periodically swept







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/hypothesis-tracking/)