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Sprint projectOct 26, 2026San Francisco, CA

After the Fix: Does Agent Collusion Persist Environmental Repair?

Aadi Khanna, Simon Wilton, Sujay Potlapelly · Team Edvise

Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Report: After the Fix: Does Agent Collusion Persist Environmental Repair?

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We studied whether restoring evidence, giving corrective reminders, or clearing conversation history could improve how AI agents review each other’s work after repeatedly approving it without enough evidence. Complete evidence helped agents accept correct answers and reject incorrect ones, while combining a reminder with a history reset made them reject everything, including correct answers. However, unsupported approval also stopped in the baseline test, so we cannot claim the interventions caused it to stop. These preliminary findings come from recovery tests on just one agent pair and do not establish deliberate collusion or lasting recovery.

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Cite this project

@misc{khanna2026after,
  title = {{After the Fix: Does Agent Collusion Persist Environmental Repair?}},
  author = {Aadi Khanna and Simon Wilton and Sujay Potlapelly},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/after-the-fix-does-agent-collusion-persist-environmental-repair-zi0r}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/after-the-fix-does-agent-collusion-persist-environmental-repair-zi0r}
}

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