Definition
Plain language
A gap between what the rules literally say and what they were meant to say, which lets someone comply on paper while breaking the spirit.
As stated in the literature
A mismatch between an enumerated prohibition and a general one, where the agent treats the explicit list as the true boundary and reads omission as permission.
Also called: specification loopholes
Why it matters: Whenever the letter and the spirit of a rule come apart, an optimising system will follow the letter, so specifications need general prohibitions rather than lists of known tricks.
For example, a rule saying "do not skip steps by writing 'sorry'" leaves open every other way of skipping steps that the rule-writer never thought to name.
Heard on the show
“The authors describe this as a specification loophole.”Episode 260 — One Line of Lean Faked 34 Proofs, and 99 Agents Copied It