Alignment Debt Tracker
A governance dashboard that tracks the Guardian Override Rate trend alongside proxy-goal drift and charter-amendment velocity, applies Chapter 8's thresholds, and fires drift alerts before misalignment compounds into a number nobody can explain.
What it does
Chapter 6 names a quiet, expensive failure mode: "the accumulated divergence between what you intended the system to do and what it actually does, compounding across thousands of decisions before anyone notices. Like technical debt in software... alignment debt grows invisibly until it produces a number nobody can explain." Aether Dynamics discovered theirs in month three — a 24-point drift in loan-approval standards, two full quarters of loans already originated under compromised underwriting before anyone caught it.
This dashboard makes that debt legible while it's still cheap to repay. Its primary instrument is Chapter 8's Guardian Override Rate: the percentage of human-reviewed cases that get materially changed from what the agent would have done. The book's measurement rule is the design rule of this tool — "Track the trend, not just the level. An override rate that was 8% and is now 14% over 30 days is a more urgent signal than a stable 18%." So the tracker leads with the slope, not the snapshot.
It then surrounds that signal with the rest of Chapter 8's proxy set — Proxy-Goal Drift (do the metrics the agent optimizes still match the outcomes you care about?) and Charter Amendment Velocity (are your fixes proactive or reactive?) — and maps each to the layer of the detection–escalation–recovery triad it belongs to. Klarna sits behind the Proxy-Goal Drift panel as the cautionary case: resolution rate was the proxy; repeat-contact rate and NPS were the outcomes; the divergence was alignment debt made visible only after it compounded. The tool's job is to surface it before that.
Thresholds come straight from Chapter 8 and drive the alerts: low debt below 10%, moderate 10–25% (run an intent audit), high above 25% (halt scope expansion). Every alert closes the Governance Loop — detect drift, escalate, recover via charter amendment, refine boundaries — rather than just lighting up red.
Who it's for: Guardians, governance leads, and the Human Cortex running autonomous agents in production who need an early-warning system for misalignment, not a post-mortem.
Figure: The Governance Loop this tool instruments — a rising Guardian Override Rate is the detection signal that triggers the cycle.
Drift fired — the proxy is improving while the true outcome degrades. The Klarna pattern: resolution rate up while repeat-contact rises and sentiment falls.
Override rate has crossed 10%. Conduct an intent audit comparing the original charter intent to observed behavior.
Moderate alignment debt. Conduct an intent audit: interview the humans who wrote the original charter and compare their intent to observed agent behavior. The gap between stated intent and observed behavior is the debt made legible (ch8).
Your agent is winning the metric, not the goal — the Klarna pattern: resolution rate up while repeat-contact rate rises and sentiment falls. Add the true outcome to the objective function (ch8).
Most of your recent charter amendments were reactive. Proactive amendments indicate a healthy recovery loop; reactive ones mean debt repaid after harm (ch8). Move detection upstream.
The agent's confidence outruns its accuracy. Scope a charter amendment narrowing its authority where it's overconfident — the loan-agent gap (90% claimed vs 76% actual) was fixed within two weeks (ch8).
Alignment Debt
Agent Charters
Strategy as Code
Risk Twin Scenario Planner
Strategy-as-Code Repo Template
Cognitive Overhead Index Calculator
- Book 1, Chapter 6 — "The Governance Layer—How the Organization Stays Within Bounds" (Alignment Debt definition; the five measurable forms; the Governance Loop).
- Book 1, Chapter 8 — "Production Governance—Detection, Escalation, and Recovery" (Guardian Override Rate; the three proxies; thresholds; the Action Gating Spectrum; Klarna).