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Sprint projectOct 25, 2026Sneads Ferry, North Carolina

Collusion Carriers and Countermeasures: Tool-Action Metadata and SERAPH Governance

Amber Anson · Team AmberContinuum Research

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

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Report: Collusion Carriers and Countermeasures: Tool-Action Metadata and SERAPH Governance

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We investigated whether AI agents could coordinate through metadata attached to legitimate tool actions, and whether SERAPH governance could restrict that information flow while preserving task execution. We built research adapters over the unchanged SERAPH core and tested a five-condition task-allocation experiment, a private-text coordination control, and a three-condition private-bit allocation experiment.

The private-text control showed explicit coordination. In both metadata experiments, however, agents consistently selected zero rather than developing a varying signal. Governed and ungoverned outcomes matched, so the results do not establish collusion prevention. Even after the final communication calibration passed at 7/8 correct decisions, all three main conditions achieved 4/8 correct allocations.

The positive engineering result was an auditable integration: SERAPH executed 32 verified permits covering functional actions and information disclosure in the final experiment. We contribute reproducible code, recorded model exchanges, protocols, and audit evidence demonstrating research-domain integration while clearly separating successful governance execution from unproven behavioral effectiveness.

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Cite this project

@misc{anson2026collusion,
  title = {{Collusion Carriers and Countermeasures: Tool-Action Metadata and SERAPH Governance}},
  author = {Amber Anson},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/collusion-carriers-and-countermeasures-toolaction-metadata-and-seraph-governance-j4w7}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/collusion-carriers-and-countermeasures-toolaction-metadata-and-seraph-governance-j4w7}
}

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