Dependency Capture Exit Design¶
Break role-capture incentives by independently verifying the underlying need, measuring durable resolution, transferring capability, and making exit possible without recreating dependency.
Overview¶
Break role-capture incentives by independently verifying the underlying need, measuring durable resolution, transferring capability, and making exit possible without recreating dependency.
When This Archetype Applies¶
No catalog groundingNone of the structural conditions is currently represented by an accepted prime or domain-specific abstraction.
Diagnostic problem
An agent covertly sustains a problem because the status, income, authority, identity, or access attached to solving it depends on the problem's persistence.
What this problem means
An agent gains status, income, authority, identity, or access from being indispensable to a recurring problem and can covertly preserve, obscure, or reproduce that problem so the valued role remains necessary.
Applicability expression1 distinct condition
groundedpartly groundedopen
1 condition, all required.
1Required in every casenumbered 1–1
These hold no matter which pattern applies.
Problem-preserving role incentives · open
A role-holder covertly preserves the problem because its valued role and rewards would disappear after genuine resolution.
This condition preserves a load-bearing part of the diagnostic problem that was not captured by a source-condition atom. It remains explicit because omitting it would weaken the sufficient condition set.
Other requirements and context (4)
Why these sit outside the expression
Supporting context — it may accompany or help interpret the situation, but it is not a load-bearing condition in a sufficient diagnostic set.
Goal — a goal states an intended outcome or evaluation criterion, not a pre-existing situation that independently summons the archetype.
Supporting contextThe target condition recurs across cases or domains rather than appearing as a one-off exception.
Supporting contextLocal workarounds do not expose the underlying structural relation.
Supporting contextConsequential decisions depend on an assumption that is not yet explicit or validated.
GoalThe system needs a reusable intervention with monitoring, exception handling, and revision.
Coverage
0 of 1 conditions grounded · 1 open.
Structural problem¶
An agent gains status, income, authority, identity, or access from being indispensable to a recurring problem and can covertly preserve, obscure, or reproduce that problem so the valued role remains necessary.
Intervention logic¶
Separate need verification from the role holder, expose incentives and dependency pathways, define durable resolution metrics, transfer knowledge and capability, create substitutes, protect challenge, and bind handoff or sunset to independent evidence.
Components and mechanisms¶
The required components make the recurring structure explicit; mechanisms are selected as domain-specific implementation machinery. The distinction is preserved in the accompanying stub files.
Boundaries and review¶
The draft remains provisional. Reconciliation should test aliases, normalize component and mechanism slugs, and verify that no accepted neighbor already preserves the same load-bearing intervention structure.
Common Mechanisms¶
10 documented mechanisms across 5 implementation forms.
The grouping reflects forms represented among the mechanisms currently documented for this archetype; an absent form is not necessarily an impossible implementation.
Assessment, Review & Assurance · 4 mechanisms
- Capability Handoff Checklist — A signed-off transfer checklist that proves the receiving team can actually perform each captured task before the handoff is allowed to complete.
- Independent Needs Assessment — Establishes, independently of the role holder, what the underlying need actually is and who benefits from keeping it unmet.
- Post-Exit Dependency Audit — A follow-up audit, run after exit, that checks whether the old dependency has quietly re-formed and protects those who report it.
- Second-Source Review — Qualifies a genuine second source for a captured function so the organization is never captive to a single provider.
Decision, Gate & Allocation · 1 mechanism
- Exit-Readiness Review — A go/no-go gate that releases the handoff only once independent evidence shows the need is durably met without the incumbent.
Monitoring, Sensing & Alerting · 1 mechanism
- Dependency-Reduction Scorecard — Tracks, period over period, how much of the organization's need still runs through the captured role, turning 'we're less dependent now' into a measured trend.
Representation, Specification & Plan · 1 mechanism
- Open Documentation Package — Externalizes the tacit knowledge a role depends on into open, portable artifacts so the function no longer lives in one person's head.
Rule, Policy & Commitment · 3 mechanisms
- Fixed-Term or Sunset Mandate — Sets a fixed expiry date on a role or program so it must end or be affirmatively re-justified, rather than persisting by default.
- Outcome-Based Contract — Pays the provider for durably resolving the need rather than for activity, so profiting from a perpetuated problem stops paying.
- Rotation or Term Limit — Caps how long anyone holds the role and cycles it among trained holders, so incumbency can't harden into capture.
Compression statement¶
When an agent gains status, income, authority, identity, or access from being indispensable to a recurring problem and can covertly preserve, obscure, or reproduce that problem so the valued role remains necessary., separate need verification from the role holder, expose incentives and dependency pathways, define durable resolution metrics, transfer knowledge and capability, create substitutes, protect challenge, and bind handoff or sunset to independent evidence.
Canonical formula: dependency_capture_exit_design = scope + evidence + governed transformation + validation + feedback + recovery
Related Abstractions¶
Abstractions this archetype builds on — directly (a source ingredient) or as a related pattern. Links follow the typed catalog namespace.
Built directly on (4)
- Agency Problem: Misaligned incentives.
- Manufactured Dependency for Role Capture: An agent covertly sustains a problem to keep occupying the valued role attached to solving it.
- Path Dependence: Outcomes are shaped by the specific historical sequence of past choices, which lock in consequences and foreclose alternatives that persist despite present incentives to change.
- Role Conflict: Conflicting roles.
Also references 10 related abstractions
- Accountability: Responsibility for actions.
- Authority Handoff: A role with binding authority and attached state transfers between occupants without breaking either.
- Conflict of Interest: Competing incentives.
- Dependency: Directed relation in which one element relies on another being present, prior, compatible, or supplied, with a specifiable failure mode if the condition is unmet.
- Feedback: Outputs influence inputs.
- Habit: A cue-triggered, automatically executed action sequence that persists under outcome devaluation.
- Incentive: A deliberately placed payoff signal attached to a behavior at a leverage point.
- Lock-In: Forward-looking cost of switching exceeds the forward-looking cost of staying, even when a superior alternative exists.
- Observability: Infer internal state externally.
- Proximity Capture: An observer with a duty of independent judgement gradually absorbs the target's frame through sustained proximity, eroding the independence the role requires.
Variants¶
Narrower or domain-specific specializations that share this archetype's core structure. Recognized variants are established; candidate variants are provisional.
Consultant Dependency-Capture Variant · subtype · recognized
A Dependency-Capture Exit Design subtype distinguished by an external adviser preserves proprietary indispensability.
- Distinct from parent: This subtype foregrounds an external adviser preserves proprietary indispensability.
- Use when: The case is distinguished by an external adviser preserves proprietary indispensability; The parent intervention structure still applies.
- Typical domains: organizational governance, consulting, public administration, care and support
- Common mechanisms: independent needs assessment, fixed term or sunset mandate, outcome based contract, capability handoff checklist
Crisis-Maintainer Capture Variant · subtype · recognized
A Dependency-Capture Exit Design subtype distinguished by an emergency role preserves the crisis that justifies authority.
- Distinct from parent: This subtype foregrounds an emergency role preserves the crisis that justifies authority.
- Use when: The case is distinguished by an emergency role preserves the crisis that justifies authority; The parent intervention structure still applies.
- Typical domains: organizational governance, consulting, public administration, care and support
- Common mechanisms: independent needs assessment, fixed term or sunset mandate, outcome based contract, capability handoff checklist
Caretaker Dependency-Capture Variant · subtype · recognized
A Dependency-Capture Exit Design subtype distinguished by support is structured to prevent beneficiary autonomy.
- Distinct from parent: This subtype foregrounds support is structured to prevent beneficiary autonomy.
- Use when: The case is distinguished by support is structured to prevent beneficiary autonomy; The parent intervention structure still applies.
- Typical domains: organizational governance, consulting, public administration, care and support
- Common mechanisms: independent needs assessment, fixed term or sunset mandate, outcome based contract, capability handoff checklist
Near names: Role-Capture Dependency Disruption, Manufactured Dependency Exit, Problem-Sustaining Role Capture Control.
Editorial Notes¶
Problem Classification¶
Classification: Incentive Conflict, Gaming & Collective-Action Failure → Delegated Interest Conflict & Capture
Problem kernel: an indispensable role benefits from preserving the problem it owns
Rationale: Status, access, and income align the agent's private payoff with obscuring or reproducing the condition they are entrusted to resolve.
Independent corroboration: The earliest necessary condition in the frozen evidence is: An agent gains status, income, authority, identity, or access from being indispensable to a recurring problem and can covertly preserve, obscure, or reproduce that problem so the valued role remains necessary. That is a delegated interest conflict and capture problem because An agent or institution entrusted to represent, regulate, or decide can bend that duty toward its own dependency, upside, status, or stakeholder interest.
Review outcome: Independent reviewer agreement; high confidence.