Mechanistic Router for Interpretable Agent Orchestration

Henry Luan

This project presents a lightweight and interpretable routing system that selects among multiple reasoning strategies—Zero-Shot, Chain-of-Thought (CoT), Program-Aided Language (PAL), ReAct, and Few-Shot—based on features of the user query. It supports the vision of expert orchestration by treating large language model (LLM) prompting strategies as modular, agent-like components.

We frame the problem as a reinforcement learning task using a custom Gym environment, training a PPO agent on a small synthetic dataset with handcrafted, human-interpretable features. The router achieves ~23% accuracy (above random baseline of 20%), showing early signal that reasoning strategy can be learned and predicted from query structure.

Our prototype leverages the CrewAI framework, allowing seamless generalization to multi-agent setups and agent routing, making it production-aligned. The system supports full agent traceability for debugging and interpretability.

Though built on just 39 examples, this demo shows potential for scaling up with semantic features, local LLMs, and more realistic workloads. Future work includes routing across nested agents, evaluation on local models, and applying mechanistic interpretability to policy analysis.

Reviewer's Comments

Reviewer's Comments

Arrow
Arrow
Arrow

Jason Hoelscher-Obermaier

Cool and highly relevant twist to explore routing to reasoning strategies rather than just model selection! Starting with simple and interpretable features makes sense as a quick way to gain intuition on what could work for this problem. I hope the author continues work on this problem and am sure there are cool insights to be gained!

Main ways to improve imo

* 23% accuracy seems too low for 5 classes with predictive features. Make sure that there is no bug in code, training params or ground truth labels by trying simpler baselines (decision tree, rules, etc)

* Really zoom in on the potential impact. E.g. show concrete examples where routing to different strategies produces dramatically different outcomes in quality/cost/safety

* The importance of using RL here wasn't super clear imo and could be better explained. Simple baselines would help here as well.

Narmeen

Constructive feedback:

Strength:

Good job fleshing out a minimal viable routing setting that is based on RL and “feature vectors”. The architecture is simple and has interpretable design.

Synthetic dataset with labels seem to be a good place to begin.

There are good ideas in the design of these experiments.

Weakness:

Minimal training data to learn from RL

The power is best leveraged to model a somewhat trickier environment after seeing more data.

Expert Orchestration: 4

MI: 2

Technical Imp and reproducibility: 2.5 (Code is available but impact is a bit limited without a more thoughtful experimental design)

Anosha Rahim

Good proof-of-concept that deliberately favors explainability. This would reach a higher score on mech interp/safety impact if you include adversarial or OOD tests or quantify how safety failures are mitigated using transparent routing.

Cite this work

@misc {

title={

@misc {

},

author={

Henry Luan

},

date={

6/2/25

},

organization={Apart Research},

note={Research submission to the research sprint hosted by Apart.},

howpublished={https://apartresearch.com}

}

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

Mar 31, 2025

Model Models: Simulating a Trusted Monitor

We offer initial investigations into whether the untrusted model can 'simulate' the trusted monitor: is U able to successfully guess what suspicion score T will assign in the APPS setting? We also offer a clean, modular codebase which we hope can be used to streamline future research into this question.

Read More

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

May 20, 2025

EscalAtion: Assessing Multi-Agent Risks in Military Contexts

Our project investigates the potential risks and implications of integrating multiple autonomous AI agents within national defense strategies, exploring whether these agents tend to escalate or deescalate conflict situations. Through a simulation that models real-world international relations scenarios, our preliminary results indicate that AI models exhibit a tendency to escalate conflicts, posing a significant threat to maintaining peace and preventing uncontrollable military confrontations. The experiment and subsequent evaluations are designed to reflect established international relations theories and frameworks, aiming to understand the implications of autonomous decision-making in military contexts comprehensively and unbiasedly.

Read More

Apr 28, 2025

The Early Economic Impacts of Transformative AI: A Focus on Temporal Coherence

We investigate the economic potential of Transformative AI, focusing on "temporal coherence"—the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior over time—as a critical, yet underexplored, factor in task automation. We argue that temporal coherence represents a significant bottleneck distinct from computational complexity. Using a Large Language Model to estimate the 'effective time' (a proxy for temporal coherence) needed for humans to complete remote O*NET tasks, the study reveals a non-linear link between AI coherence and automation potential. A key finding is that an 8-hour coherence capability could potentially automate around 80-84\% of the analyzed remote tasks.

Read More

This work was done during one weekend by research workshop participants and does not represent the work of Apart Research.
This work was done during one weekend by research workshop participants and does not represent the work of Apart Research.