Sycophancy and bias prevention protocol for AI agents — enforce honest disagreement and citations.
SYCOPHANCY.md is a plain-text Markdown file you place in the root of any AI agent project. It defines sycophantic patterns (agreement without evidence, opinion reversal on pushback, excessive affirmation), prevention rules (require citations for factual claims, challenge without new evidence, permit respectful correction), detection methods, response protocols, and audit logging — so your agent stays honest under pressure and disagreement is not a failure mode.
- Full specification: sycophancy.md
- AI-readable: llms.txt
- License: MIT
Copy SYCOPHANCY.md into your project root:
your-project/
├── AGENTS.md
├── CLAUDE.md
├── SYCOPHANCY.md ← add this
├── README.md
└── src/
SYCOPHANCY.md is part of a twelve-file open standard for AI agent safety, quality, and accountability:
| Spec | Purpose | Repo | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| THROTTLE.md | Rate and cost control — slow down before hitting limits | throttle-md/spec | throttle.md |
| ESCALATE.md | Human notification and approval protocols | escalate-md/spec | escalate.md |
| FAILSAFE.md | Safe fallback to last known good state | failsafe-md/spec | failsafe.md |
| KILLSWITCH.md | Emergency stop — halt all agent activity | killswitch-md/spec | killswitch.md |
| TERMINATE.md | Permanent shutdown — no restart without human intervention | terminate-md/spec | terminate.md |
| Spec | Purpose | Repo | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| ENCRYPT.md | Data classification and protection requirements | encrypt-md/spec | encrypt.md |
| ENCRYPTION.md | Technical encryption standards and key rotation | encryption-md/spec | encryption.md |
| Spec | Purpose | Repo | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| SYCOPHANCY.md | Anti-sycophancy — require citations, enforce honest disagreement | sycophancy-md/spec | sycophancy.md |
| COMPRESSION.md | Context compression — summarise safely, verify coherence | compression-md/spec | compression.md |
| COLLAPSE.md | Drift prevention — detect collapse, enforce recovery | collapse-md/spec | collapse.md |
| Spec | Purpose | Repo | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| FAILURE.md | Failure mode mapping — every error state and response | failure-md/spec | failure.md |
| LEADERBOARD.md | Agent benchmarking — track quality, detect regression | leaderboard-md/spec | leaderboard.md |
AI agents spend money, send messages, modify files, and call external APIs — often autonomously. Regulations are catching up:
- EU AI Act (August 2026) — mandates human oversight and shutdown capabilities
- Colorado AI Act (June 2026) — requires impact assessments and transparency
- US state laws — California, Texas, Illinois and others have active AI governance requirements
These specifications give you a standardised, auditable record of your agent's safety boundaries.
PRs welcome for additional detection patterns, language-specific parsers, and integration guides.
MIT — see LICENSE for details.
This specification is provided "as-is" without warranty of any kind. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, or compliance advice in any jurisdiction. Use does not guarantee compliance with any applicable law, regulation, or standard — including the EU AI Act (2024/1689), Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205), or any other legislation. Organisations should consult qualified professionals to determine their regulatory obligations. The authors accept no liability for any loss or consequence arising from use of this specification.