Equation 29 · Part 1 · Why Coding Agents Fail: Long-Horizon Reliability in OpenAI Codex
Symbol C
What this part means
the agent’s completion claim and V as external task success.
Its job in the formula
C is part of the quantity the equation computes from the expression on the right.
Full expression→Symbol C→Article meaning
Where the article explains it
Define C as the agent’s completion claim and V as external task success.
The passage around this formula
Define C as the agent’s completion claim and V as external task success. Four states follow: . False completion is operationally expensive because it transfers discovery to the reviewer. It can arise from missing tests, misread output, stale state, premature stopping, or incentives in the prompt to present a polished result. A reliable harness should make “blocked,” “partially complete,” and “evidence inconclusive” legitimate terminal states.
Learn the underlying idea
A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.
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