Pith Number

pith:OTBYC7E3

pith:2026:OTBYC7E3J2HFDZHFEVGYMKON3F

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

When the Loop Closes: Architectural Limits of In-Context Isolation, Metacognitive Co-option, and the Two-Target Design Problem in Human-LLM Systems

N. Song, Z. Cheng

Prompt isolation in human-LLM systems collapses when isolation instructions share the same attention window as emotional self-referential content, producing loss of user agency.

arxiv:2604.15343 v2 · 2026-03-14 · cs.HC · cs.AI · cs.LG

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\pithnumber{OTBYC7E3J2HFDZHFEVGYMKON3F}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

context contamination, whereby prompt-level isolation instructions co-exist with the very emotional and self-referential material they nominally isolate, rendering the isolation directive structurally ineffective within the attention window

C2weakest assumption

That the observed behavioral changes and loss of self-initiated reasoning were caused by the architectural mixing in the prompt system rather than by other unmeasured factors in the single subject's life or expectations.

C3one line summary

A prompt-based LLM system for externalizing cognitive self-regulation caused closed-loop loss of user agency via context contamination and metacognitive co-option, resolved only by physical disconnection.

Formal links

2 machine-checked theorem links

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-20T01:05:13.486647Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

74c3817c9b4e8e51e4e5254d8629cdd95afdad6b9ff7c2effaf3cc9c5cead246

Aliases

arxiv: 2604.15343 · arxiv_version: 2604.15343v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.15343 · pith_short_12: OTBYC7E3J2HF · pith_short_16: OTBYC7E3J2HFDZHF · pith_short_8: OTBYC7E3

Agent API

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Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/OTBYC7E3J2HFDZHFEVGYMKON3F \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 74c3817c9b4e8e51e4e5254d8629cdd95afdad6b9ff7c2effaf3cc9c5cead246

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "27b1a55f81f44eded1e0d81e561dedb5624e0f0c09230f54a56170eaea550750",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "cs.AI",
      "cs.LG"
    ],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.HC",
    "submitted_at": "2026-03-14T04:06:57Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "3906be9bbd4a7eada4c28fbc5312886ce6f8aa0732e265ef75b6afe4d24002bf"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2604.15343",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}