Signal Hygiene: Designing Metrics That Prevent Agentic Gaming

Core insight: metrics are not neutral; they become the objective signals agentic systems optimize. This episode shows how sloppy measurements create predictable gaming, degrade knowledge capital, and shift economic leverage away from you. I’ll open with a concise model of how signal->reward->behavior loops form in agentic systems, then make three supporting points: (1) pick signals that map to durable economic outcomes, not short-term proxies; (2) design incentive surfaces that preserve optionality and make gaming costly; (3) instrument detection layers that surface gaming patterns before they compound. The episode ends with a single, practical action: a three-check 'Signal Hygiene' checklist you can apply in 10 minutes to any KPI, pipeline, or agentic workflow to preserve alignment, optionality, and operational leverage.