Emergent Coordination [ "P012", "P019", "P027" ]
An occurrence in a multi-agent system of a coordination pattern that was not explicitly specified, arising from the interaction of components rather than from any single component's design. The referent is the observed unspecified coordinated behaviour.
Operational Definition
EVENT. One occurrence is recorded when system logs show a stable coordinated behaviour among agents (e.g. role division, turn-taking, convergence on a shared plan) that is not entailed by any individual agent's specification or by explicit coordination rules. The observable marker is a recurring inter-agent pattern absent from the design specification.
Measurement Schema
Proposed measurement protocol (not yet empirically validated): Specification-versus-behaviour log analysis: interaction traces are mined for recurrent multi-agent patterns; each candidate is checked against the documented specification and ablated to confirm it disappears when interaction is removed. Could be reported as count of specification-absent coordinated patterns per run and their stability (recurrence rate across seeds); two analysts independently adjudicate 'unspecified' status with agreement would be assessed via Cohen's kappa.