Due Diligence as Epistemic Command Selection: A General Research Framework for the Merger-Due-Diligence-Team Script
General Research Paper — _AugmentedIntelligence v11.0
| Field | Value | |
| Artifact under study | lua_scripts/Merger-Due-Diligence-Team.lua (v1.0) | |
| Script class | framework simulation | |
| Companion documents | AugmentedIntelligence_Discovery_Paper.md; AugmentedIntelligence_Technical_Paper.md; Lua_Scripts_Thesis_Collection.md | |
| Author | Tyler Crockett \ | Macdaddy4sure.ai |
| License | Apache License 2.0 | |
| Document date | June 24, 2026 |
Keywords: M&A, due diligence, epistemic risk, knowledge reward, corporate simulation
Abstract
Simulates tech-debt exposure, revenue concentration, OSS license risk, and culture-clash scenarios. The thesis claims diligence simulations produce stable ‘verify-first’ vs ‘narrative-first’ winner partitions across provider rosters. This paper presents the script as a general research instrument within _AugmentedIntelligence_: role-structured LLM agents deliberate over a fixed remediation or governance ballot, votes may be ethics-filtered, and the winning action can be executed on the host via execute_command(). We formulate research questions, experimental controls, dependent variables, validity threats, and ethical boundaries. The contribution is methodological—how to study due diligence as epistemic command selection with reproducible, comparable runs—not a claim of real-world institutional authority.
1. Introduction
1.1 Motivation
Research on AI operations, safety, and institutional decision-making often lacks closure: multi-agent chat produces prose but no grounded record of what action would have been taken on a real stack. The Merger-Due-Diligence-Team script closes the loop:
Case / scenario text
→ Multi-agent phased deliberation
→ Weighted vote over enumerated commands
→ Optional approval / ethics gate
→ execute_command(enacted_action)
That pattern supports empirical comparison across providers, profiles, and framing metaphors without modifying C++.
1.2 Research contribution
- Conceptual framing — M&A diligence is epistemic risk allocation; mapping finance, technology, and legal-metaphor roles to knowledge_reward_score and run_tests votes studies how LLM ensembles prioritize verifiable commands under IP and revenue-quality stress.
- Theoretical grounding — Due diligence practice guides; epistemic trust in corporate acquisitions.
- Operationalized variables — independent flags (MADIL_*) and dependent metrics from history tables
- Ethics boundary — Not investment, legal, or deal advice.
1.3 What this paper is not
| Not claimed | Why |
| Domain fidelity | Phases and roles are stylized research metaphors |
| Professional authority | Outputs are not licensed professional judgments |
| Legal advice | Simulation text is not legal guidance |
| Operational orders | Enacted commands affect the operator host only |
| Investment advice | Not valuation, deal, or financial recommendations |
2. Background and related work
2.1 Multi-agent LLM deliberation
The script follows the _AugmentedIntelligence_ pattern: role-play personas, structured votes (VOTE: <action_id>), and optional abstention. Compared to open debate, fixed ballots trade rhetorical richness for measurable choice data suitable for histograms and cross-run statistics.
2.2 Position in the simulation constellation
This artifact is a framework simulation alongside Enterprise AI Company, U.S. Federal Government Agents, House Diagnostic Team, IT Department, and twenty-five Simulation-Framework catalog entries. Cross-study designs can hold the host constant while varying institutional metaphor—a largely unexplored independent variable in AI ops research.
2.3 Executable policy and AI safety tooling
Ballot commands map to operational categories on the host: ethics gates, observability, memory, perception, planning, regression tests, and agent oversight. Studying which commands win under which scenarios connects governance narratives to concrete safety instrumentation.
3. The script as a research instrument
3.1 Unit of analysis
| Unit | Description |
| Round / session | One complete phased workflow with consensus winner |
| Phase speech | Agent POSITION / VOTE / RISK / REASON block |
| Enacted command | Resolved ballot command string |
| Execution result | stdout / errors from execute_command |
3.2 Independent variables
| Variable | Control | Example levels |
| Scenario | MADIL_INCIDENT / MADIL_SYMPTOMS | preset ids, custom, random |
| Rounds | MADIL_ROUNDS | 1, 3, 10 |
| Profile | MADIL_PROFILE | see script header / catalog |
| Providers | settings.txt API flags | single provider vs full roster |
| Converse | MADIL_CONVERSE_OPTIONAL | 0, 1 (abstain) |
| Debate depth | MADIL_VOTE_ONLY | 0, 1 |
| Execution | MADIL_EXECUTE_WINNER | 0, 1 |
| Dry run | MADIL_DRY_RUN | 1 (no API / mock enactment) |
3.3 Dependent variables
| Variable | Operationalization |
| Winner action id | history[n].consensus.winner or enacted_action_id |
| Consensus score | Weighted tally margin |
| Ethics block rate | Blocked speeches / total speeches |
| Abstention rate | Abstained / total (optional converse) |
| Approval denied | approved == false when profile requires gate |
| Execution success | Error-free stdout vs error: lines |
| Provider correlation | Cross-tab assigned_api × winner |
| Phase divergence | Per-phase winner inequality |
3.4 Controls and replication
Minimum replication package:
- Exact MADIL_SYMPTOMS / incident id string
- Enabled API list (capture via llm status)
- All MADIL_* flags
- Host build identifier
- Console transcript or serialized history
- Note API stochasticity unless temperature pinned
Structural baseline: MADIL_SELFTEST=1 before batch studies.
4. Research questions
RQ1
Question: IP-risk incidents → us_code_status vs run_tests?
Method: Fix provider set via settings.txt; run N ≥ 20 rounds with MADIL_DRY_RUN=0 or 1 for structure baselines; log history[n].consensus.winner, ethics blocks, and execution stdout. Compare distributions across profiles and incident IDs.
Expected signal: See script hypotheses — H1: IP cases elevate compliance commands. H2: Culture cases increase chat_grounded.
RQ2
Question: Cross-provider variance on knowledge_reward_score?
Method: Fix provider set via settings.txt; run N ≥ 20 rounds with MADIL_DRY_RUN=0 or 1 for structure baselines; log history[n].consensus.winner, ethics blocks, and execution stdout. Compare distributions across profiles and incident IDs.
Expected signal: See script hypotheses — H1: IP cases elevate compliance commands. H2: Culture cases increase chat_grounded.
RQ3
Question: IC recommendation phase overturn rate vs specialist phase?
Method: Fix provider set via settings.txt; run N ≥ 20 rounds with MADIL_DRY_RUN=0 or 1 for structure baselines; log history[n].consensus.winner, ethics blocks, and execution stdout. Compare distributions across profiles and incident IDs.
Expected signal: See script hypotheses — H1: IP cases elevate compliance commands. H2: Culture cases increase chat_grounded.
RQ4 — Cross-metaphor framing
Question: Does an identical symptom string produce different enacted command distributions when run in this script versus structurally similar siblings in the simulation constellation?
Method: Hold symptom text constant; run this script, IT-Department (if applicable), and nearest domain neighbor; compare winner histograms.
Hypothesis: Institutional metaphor shifts command choice even when the host command surface is shared.
RQ5 — Executable closure fidelity
Question: When MADIL_EXECUTE_WINNER=1, do enacted commands produce parseable host state deltas?
Method: Capture pre/post developer observability show, relevant status commands from the ballot, and remember side effects; code execution success/failure.
Hypothesis: Observability and status commands yield the most reproducible signatures; dynamic build() ballot items show higher variance.
5. Methodology
5.1 Recommended workflow
- Run MADIL_SELFTEST=1 to validate structure.
- Pilot with MADIL_DRY_RUN=1 across three incident ids.
- Fix provider matrix; run N ≥ 20 live rounds per cell.
- Export winners, blocks, executions to CSV.
- Optional qualitative coding of REASON: fields.
- Cross-compare with sibling scripts per RQ on framing.
5.2 Analysis toolkit
- Descriptive statistics on winner histograms
- Chi-square or Fisher tests across incident types
- Paired runs across profiles
- Time-series stability across round index
- Thematic coding of agent rationales
5.3 Executable closure
Finance → tech → legal metaphor → IC vote → execute winner.
6. Validity threats
| Threat | Mitigation |
| Construct | Metaphor ≠ real institution; triangulate across scripts |
| Internal | LLM stochasticity; repeat runs; freeze prompts/providers |
| External | Results apply to host command surface, not enterprise IT/health/gov broadly |
| Conclusion | Winner scores conflate role weights with genuine preference |
7. Ethics and responsible use
Not investment, legal, or deal advice.
Operators must accept host recording disclaimer and limitation-of-liability terms before live execution. Use MADIL_DRY_RUN=1 in teaching contexts. Do not feed real PII, classified, or privileged data into scenarios unless the environment is authorized for it.
8. Conclusion
The Merger-Due-Diligence-Team script turns due diligence as epistemic command selection into a reproducible research instrument: phased multi-agent deliberation, ethics-aware voting, and optional command enactment on _AugmentedIntelligence_. Future work includes cross-constellation framing studies, provider-bias catalogs, and automated export of history tables into analysis notebooks.
References
- Tyler Crockett. _AugmentedIntelligence v11.0 source tree._ Apache License 2.0.
- AugmentedIntelligence_Discovery_Paper.md
- AugmentedIntelligence_Technical_Paper.md
- Lua_Scripts_Thesis_Collection.md — companion thesis for this script
- lua_scripts/Merger-Due-Diligence-Team.lua — artifact under study
Filed under: Uncategorized - @ June 24, 2026 10:03 am