Metacognition

CortexPrism assesses every user task before execution and reflects on every agent turn afterwards. The metacognition system scores confidence, classifies task types, escalates low-confidence assessments, and runs adversarial second-pass critiques.

Task Assessment (`assessTask`)

packages/ai/src/agent/metacog.ts analyzes user messages for:

Ambiguity — unclear intent triggers ask_first decision
Complexity — multi-step tasks trigger plan_with_rollback
Code tasks — patterns like "fix bug", "implement", "refactor"
Destructive intent — patterns like "rm", "delete", "drop"
Independent subtasks — "and also", "then after" triggers parallelize

Decisions

Decision	Meaning
`direct`	Execute immediately
`ask_first`	Request clarification before proceeding
`delegate`	Hand off to a sub-agent
`plan_with_rollback`	Generate a plan artifact before executing
`parallelize`	Fan out to multiple sub-agents concurrently

Confidence Escalation

When confidence falls below 0.35 for a direct decision, the system auto-escalates to ask_first:

if confidence < 0.35 and decision === 'direct':
    escalate to ask_first with clarification prompt
    log escalation event to lens_events

Escalation events appear in the Metacognition page history with a red ⚡ escalated badge.

Adversarial Self-Critique

After each turn (when reflection is enabled), a second-pass critique runs using a skeptical/adversarial system prompt that actively looks for:

Missed edge cases and error handling gaps
Validation omissions
Security concerns the agent may have overlooked
Alternative approaches

Results are stored in reflection_memory with category adversarial and surfaced as critique cards in the Metacognition web UI.

API Endpoints

Endpoint	Description
`GET /api/metacognition/history`	Recent assessments, reflections, and escalations (limit 80)
`GET /api/metacognition/summary`	Decision distribution, total escalations, recent critiques
`POST /api/metacognition/test`	Test assessment with full signal breakdown and confidence

Web UI

The Metacognition page shows:

Decision Distribution — bar chart of decision types
Decision History — timeline with color-coded decisions and escalation badges
Adversarial Critiques — critique cards showing issues from the adversarial reflection pass