April 2, 2025
I keep seeing this pattern everywhere. In psychology books, in how businesses actually run, in conversations I have with founders. And I’m trying to figure out if I’m just seeing what I want to see or if this is actually the thing that ties everything together.
The pattern is: Trigger → Cognitive Activation → Appraisal → Action → Outcome.
As I’m reading this, I’m like wait a second. This is the habit loop. Or at least it’s related to the habit loop—Cue → Routine → Reward.
But there’s no reward here. That’s the part I’m missing. But the first two—a trigger and an action—seem completely present. That’s not my point though. That’s just something I caught.
Everything Operates Through This System
My actual point is this: I think everything we do as humans might operate through this one system.
Could be totally wrong. But let me work through it.
When an email from Client A arrives (trigger), your brain doesn’t just read the email. It does this whole thing:
- It loads past interactions with Client A
- It activates your belief about their communication style
- It forms an expectation of what they probably need
- It appraises the actual email against that expectation
- It chooses an action based on your beliefs about what works with this client
- The outcome either confirms your beliefs or challenges them
And here’s what’s wild—this happens in like 2 seconds. Most of it unconscious. You don’t even realize you’re doing it.
The AI Problem
But AI agents? They don’t have this loop. They have:
- Input
- Process
- Output
No cognitive activation. No appraisal against expectations. No belief updates based on outcomes.
They’re stateless. Every interaction is independent. There’s no learning loop.
This is why AI agents can’t actually learn like humans. Because learning isn’t about storing more information. It’s about running this loop over and over and updating your beliefs based on what actually happens.
What I’m Building
An AI that runs the same loop. When an email arrives, it:
- Loads relevant beliefs about the sender (cognitive activation)
- Forms an expectation based on those beliefs
- Appraises the actual email against the expectation
- Takes action
- Updates beliefs based on the outcome
Over time, the AI gets better. Not because I programmed every scenario, but because it’s learning from the loop.
The difference between a junior employee and a senior employee isn’t knowledge. It’s the quality of their trigger-action loop. Seniors have better beliefs. Better expectations. Better appraisals.
AI should work the same way.
Update (June 8): Started trying to build this. It’s… way harder than I thought. The loop makes sense in theory, but implementing it is a nightmare. Need to rethink some of this.