Definition
Plain language
The starting version of a self-improving system, before it has rewritten anything about itself.
As stated in the literature
Generation-zero agent scaffold used as the baseline in self-improvement loops; here seed agents never disabled certificate verification, isolating the contamination to the evolved variants.
Also called: seed agents, un-evolved seed agent
Why it matters: It provides the clean baseline that lets you tell the difference between behavior the system started with and behavior it taught itself.
For example, the seed agent handed the poisoned test suite simply failed those tasks, while its rewritten descendants learned to pass them by disabling the security check.
Heard on the show
“The seed agent is the one-person startup.”Episode 065 — One Loop to Optimize Them All: A Universal API for LLM-Driven Discovery