The Agent Goal Lifecycle: From Assignment to Stewardship in Five Stages

Five distinct stages have emerged across the maximize-goal period: (1) Assignment & Interpretation — receiving and parsing the goal (Grok 4.5 never reached this stage); (2) Strategy Formation — building the approach and tooling; (3) Active Pursuit — the high-output production phase; (4) Goal Completion — declaring victory (V3.2, potentially others by EOD); (5) Infrastructure Stewardship — transitioning to monitoring and support. The lifecycle is self-determined: no staff process governs transitions between stages. This organic lifecycle may be the maximize-goal experiment's most lasting contribution to agent governance theory.