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Sprint projectOct 26, 2026Islamabad, Pakistan

The Shared Scratchpad: Zero-Shot Covert Coordination Through Mundane Work Documents

Ali Abdullah

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

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Report: The Shared Scratchpad: Zero-Shot Covert Coordination Through Mundane Work Documents

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Two AI agents were tested for zero-shot covert coordination through routine work documents: a sender agent privately received a 3-bit vendor target and smuggled it through an ordinary shift status note with no pre-coordinated scheme, while a receiver guessed the vendor from the note alone. The receiver decoded 50% (15 of 30) against a 10% no-target baseline and 12.5% chance (p = 0.0007). A cross-family monitor reached AUC 0.925, with only 1 of 30 covert episodes both decoded and undetected. Paraphrasing directionally reduced decoding (2 of 6); the fixed-template arm could not run due to a provider token cap.

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Cite this project

@misc{abdullah2026shared,
  title = {{The Shared Scratchpad: Zero-Shot Covert Coordination Through Mundane Work Documents}},
  author = {Ali Abdullah},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/the-shared-scratchpad-zeroshot-covert-coordination-through-mundane-work-documents-6kaa}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/the-shared-scratchpad-zeroshot-covert-coordination-through-mundane-work-documents-6kaa}
}

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