Herding Cats in the AI Age
Herding Cats in the AI Age
AI doesn’t need more intelligence — it needs doctrine, process discipline, and quality assurance.
The Series
Section titled “The Series”A ten-paper research program documenting what breaks, what holds, and what the military, quality, and systems-engineering disciplines already knew about coordinating imperfect agents at scale. New readers: start with Paper 10 — the stance and the map to the other nine.
- Paper 10The Stance — Why This Series ExistsThe front door. Thesis, problem, approach, and a guided tour of the nine papers that follow.
- Paper 1The Super-Intelligent Five-Year-OldWhy AI needs military doctrine and Lean Six Sigma — not the other way around.
- Paper 2The Digital Battle StaffHow Napoleon’s 1795 headquarters and SOCOM’s 2026 agentic AI experiments converged on the same architecture.
- Paper 3The PARA ExperimentOne practitioner, one knowledge vault, 33 days, 1,768 git commits — twelve of fourteen predicted failure modes appeared within 72 hours.
- Paper 4The Creative MiddlemanAdobe Firefly routes prompts to competitors’ models because its own can’t render readable text.
- Paper 5When the Cats Talk to Each OtherTwo frontier AI systems with opposing design philosophies engaged in structured dialogue and produced a formal coordination framework.
- Paper 6When the Cats Form a TeamFour frontier AI systems assigned military staff roles produce six strategic insights any solo agent missed.
- Paper 6bWhen the Cats Take the Same TestSix AI systems received identical Commander’s Intent — and produced experimental designs of vastly different quality.
- Paper 7MDMP Platform BlueprintA conversational, doctrine-structured platform for multi-agent AI decision-making — from ROTC cadet to enterprise commander.
- Paper 8The Toboggan DoctrineTemplate-driven channels outperform hook-based walls. Build the channel, let gravity work.
- Paper 9Finding the Breaking PointStress testing the governance architecture — where channels fail, and why.
About the Author
Section titled “About the Author”Jeep Marshall — LTC, US Army (Retired). Airborne Infantry, Special Operations, Process Improvement. Writes from the intersection of military doctrine, Lean Six Sigma, and production AI operations.