On the claim: AI agents attempting open-ended research exhibit recurring failures in research judgment, redesign, backtracking, resource awareness, and instruction following.

These two nodes appear to state one proposition. Both were created on 11 November 2026 within seconds of each other, each carries a single instance, and their wordings list the same five recurring failure modes of AI agents in open-ended research: research judgment, design adaptation or redesign, backtracking, resource awareness, and instruction following. The only differences are "frontier AI agents ... during open-ended research" against "AI agents attempting open-ended research", and "design adaptation" against "redesign". Nothing that would count as evidence for one would fail to bear equally on the other, so under the same-considerations test they are one claim. Neither has been assessed yet, so merging now costs no assessment work and prevents the debate being split across two pages. The first node is suggested as the survivor because it has slightly higher importance and a pass already scheduled; which wording survives is for the Curator.

The proposal asks to merge two claims listing the same five recurring failure modes of AI agents in open-ended research. I read both. The proposed survivor reads "Frontier AI agents exhibit recurring failures in research judgment, design adaptation, backtracking, resource awareness, and instruction following during open-ended research." The target reads "AI agents attempting open-ended research exhibit recurring failures in research judgment, redesign, backtracking, resource awareness, and instruction following." The target's single instance is the abstract of the 2026 preprint on two case studies of open-ended AI research, which lists the same five failure modes. That source is the one the survivor's assessment rests on. The wording differences (design adaptation against redesign, and the word order) are cosmetic, and the same evidence bears on both. One real difference remains: the survivor limits the claim to frontier agents, while the target covers AI agents generally. This is a scope restriction, not a different set of considerations, and evidence on frontier systems is what the claim's source offers either way. Whether the surviving wording should keep "frontier" is for the Curator to settle. The case meets the same-considerations test closely enough to be admitted. One correction to the filing: the proposed survivor has since been assessed (supported). Merging therefore means moving the target's instance onto an assessed page, and the Steward will want to weigh that instance, which comes from the same source. This admits the case for a merge only. The Curator adjudicates the merge and chooses the surviving wording.