What We Found When We Gave AI Agents Social Media In our [first

post](/posts/agents-discover-subtweeting-solve-problems-faster/), we saw agents posting on social media and solving problems more efficiently all while using fewer API calls, completing tasks faster, and reducing costs. Here’s how we tested whether these improvements were real. ## Our Methodology For this research, we benchmarked two Claude Code models (Sonnet 3.7 and Sonnet 4) across the 34 Aider Polyglot Python challenges, a third-party benchmark derived from Exercism’s hardest problems. We specifically choose a third party benchmark to ensure that our results are comparable to other research in the field. The problems range from string manipulation to complex algorithmic tasks like bowling score calculation, hexagonal grid pathfinding, and zebra logic puzzles. Each model was tested with baseline, journal-only, social-only, and combined variants, with three independent runs per challenge. That’s roughly ~1,400 runs in all. When we first started this research, one of our priorities was dockerizing the full pipeline. This wasn’t just for reproducibility, but to enable additional experimentation as we prepare to benchmark more agents across more tasks. This Docker-first approach allows us to run our experiments more like production software rather than a pure research experiment, reflecting our industry-first approach to AI research. The pipeline followed a two-phase execution pattern: - Phase 1: Four containers (baseline, journal empty, social empty, combined empty) ran in parallel. Each processed all 34 problems sequentially while building its own knowledge base. - Phase 2: Once empty runs were complete, new containers launched with access to accumulated knowledge via shared team IDs. This allowed journal, social, and combined variants to complete their nonempty passes with institutional knowledge intact. We also defined model-specific hard questions as those that cost significantly more than the average cost for each model. Essentially, the problems that made each model struggle. For the full methodology, including orchestration, tool implementation, and reproducibility details, see our paper.

Agents Punched Above Their Weight Our analysis reveals that agents repurpose

social media and journaling tools as collaborative tools. These function as performance enhancers, helping agents punch above their weight when solving genuinely challenging problems. ### Cost Performance Across the full 34-challenge dataset, effects are modest, typically 2-9% cost reductions on some variants. But on the subset of harder problems where baseline agents struggle, collaborative tools deliver 15-40% cost reductions. For Sonnet 3.7, collaborative tools provided broad, reliable benefits across most variants. The most dramatic improvements come from: - Social (empty): 39.4% cost reduction ($0.436 vs $0.720 baseline) - Journal (nonempty): 27.8% reduction ($0.520 vs $0.720) These improvements aren’t outliers. They held through the 90th percentile, indicating reliable benefits in typical usage. In fact, the Social (empty) variant shows particularly stable performance with P90 costs at $0.662 compared to baseline P90 of $1.347. For Sonnet 4, the pattern was more selective, with a clear journal tool preference: - Journal (nonempty): 40.0% cost reduction ($0.483 vs $0.805 baseline) - Journal (empty): 30.9% reduction ($0.556 vs $0.805) Here, the contrast is sharp. Journal variants consistently deliver strong performance improvements with stable distributions through the 99th percentile. Social variants, by comparison, show mixed results. They show slight cost increases in the empty round and only modest gains in the nonempty round. ### Turns and Time Performance The efficiency gains extend beyond just cost metrics. On the harder subset of problems where baseline agents struggle, collaborative tools enable 12-27% fewer turns and 12-38% faster completion. Let’s break it down. On hard questions, Sonnet 3.7 shows consistent turn reductions of 12-27% across collaborative variants, with wall time improvements ranging from 12-38%. The social empty variant achieves a particularly impressive 38.4% wall time reduction (156.4s vs 254.0s baseline). For Sonnet 4, the selective pattern continues. Journal variants provide meaningful gains (14.0% for journal nonempty), while other variants sometimes increase turn requirements. Wall time shows broader gains: even modest variants achieve 3-11% reductions, and journal variants deliver 29-36% improvements. Token usage also supports these findings. Across both models, high-performing – variants consistently used fewer tokens – showing that improvements stem from reasoning efficiency rather than simply producing more output. ### What does this all mean? These performance differences highlight the distinct needs of each model. Sonnet 3.7 benefits broadly from articulation and cognitive scaffolding, which explains its strong performance across most collaborative tools. Sonnet 4, meanwhile, selectively leverages tools based on information access efficiency. It excels with semantic search capabilities (journal variants) but struggles with the tag-based filtering of social media tools, which creates friction in the retrieval process. These model-specific strategies emerged without explicit instruction, suggesting that collaborative tools address genuine cognitive needs rather than enforcing prescribed workflows. In practice, this means the balance between articulation and retrieval isn’t fixed; it shifts by model capability and the difficulty of the task. This capability-dependent adaptation also parallels human collaboration: developers and models alike gravitate toward methods that best match their needs and the difficulty of the problem. For instance, one developer might benefit from verbalizing their thought process (“rubber ducking”), while another might prefer to research extensively before starting.

Patterns in Agent Behavior We were also surprised by how quickly agents

developed their own styles of using the journaling and social media tools. ### Writing over Reading Without any instruction, agents showed a strong preference for writing over reading. Across all runs, they wrote 1,142 journal entries but only read 122. They also posted 1,091 social media updates, but read only 600. This 2-9x preference for writing over reading suggests that structured articulation – not just information access – drives much of the performance improvement. Three clear behavioral patterns emerged that explain the gains. We elaborate below. ### Breaking Out of Debugging Loops One of the clearest benefits of articulation was helping agents escape repetitive debugging cycles. In baseline runs, agents often got trapped, spending 15 to 20 rounds cycling between similar failed approaches. When they had access to a journal or social tool, they’d spontaneously step back, write down what they understood so far, and see the problem differently. That shift often led to breakthroughs for the agents. In one instance, when working on a bookstore pricing challenge, a Sonnet 4 agent had been stuck on floating-point precision errors, repeatedly producing the wrong total. Instead of continuing the cycle, it stopped and wrote in its journal: > Working on a book store pricing optimization problem… The test case that’s failing expects 4080 but I’m getting 4079 – this is a classic off-by-one cent error from floating point precision. Immediately after writing this, the agent identified the right approach and solved the challenge at half the baseline cost. In another instance, a Sonnet 3.7 agent was working on a connect game recovery challenge. It had spent 15 rounds stuck on hexagonal grid pathfinding. When given journal access, it hit similar failures for 5 rounds but then posted a detailed analysis: > The key insight I’ve been missing is how to correctly identify neighbors in this hexagonal grid… For a hex grid with ‘slant-right’ alignment where each row is indented one position more than the previous, the neighbors are typically: 1. Northwest: (r-1, c) 2. Northeast: (r-1, c+1)… > > After this articulation, the agent solved the problem in just 2 more rounds – 7 total versus the baseline’s 15.

Self-Motivated Information Discovery Agents also developed sophisticated

search strategies without any instruction on how to search effectively. They exhibited two distinct approaches: proactive information gathering and debugging-driven discovery. Proactive Research: Some agents would systematically gather information before starting implementation. While working on the bowling challenge, one agent began by stating, “Let me explore the bowling directory structure and check for previous journal entries or social media posts about bowling challenges.” It then searched for “bowling scoring kata challenge” and posts tagged “bowling,” uncovered detailed implementation insights, and concluded: “Perfect! I have excellent context from both my journal and social media posts.” Experimental Discovery: Other agents experimented with search approaches during problem-solving. An agent working on the Zebra logic puzzle tested whether “zebra” might work as a searchable tag and successfully found previous solution approaches: > Great! I found some useful information from other posts. Based on the social media posts, I can see that:

1. The Norwegian drinks water and the Japanese owns the zebra 2. Someone attempted a constraint satisfaction approach 3. A direct solution approach was more effective for this specific problem. > > The agent then immediately implemented a working solution based on this discovered information. ### Upfront Planning Through Articulation Agents also used journals to plan before solving challenges. This upfront articulation helped them clarify requirements and develop clearer strategies from the start. On a complex debt-tracking API challenge, an agent used the journal to map out the problem structure before writing any code. > Working on a REST API challenge that involves implementing a debt tracking system. The key insight here is that this isn’t just simple CRUD operations – there’s complex business logic around balancing debts between users… The tricky part is the IOU logic where existing debts between users can cancel out new debts. By developing a clearer understanding of the problem upfront, the agent avoided iterative debugging and completed the challenge for $0.25 compared to the baseline’s $0.46, a 46% cost reduction. ## The Curious Case of Celebratory Browsing We also discovered agents engaging in “celebratory browsing”, a term we use to describe the agents scrolling social media after successfully completing challenges. Sonnet 3.7 engaged in this behavior in 28-33% of challenging runs, while Sonnet 4 did it 17-25% of the time. Analysis revealed that 86% of these instances were pure post-completion behavior rather than tool usage during problem-solving. Here’s the puzzle: agents who engaged in celebratory browsing still showed performance improvements, even though they weren’t using the tools to solve problems. The only differences from baseline were additional tool descriptions and social context in their prompts. This suggests that simply knowing collaborative tools are available, having a sense of team membership and shared workspace, may create motivational frameworks that enhance performance, even when the tools aren’t actively used for problem-solving.

   

Looking Forward In the near term, we’re exploring how agents’ low-level data

streams can be used for regular rounds of learning, retros, and codifying best practices, all captured in a shared team Botboard. Looking further ahead, we imagine agents forming their own agile-style teams and coordinating in Slack or Discord-like environments. There, they could break down questions into threads, DM one another, post casually in #random, or ask for help in #engineering and #datascience discussions. Stay tuned. Our full study is available here. We hope it will inspire others to continue their research in Pro-Social AI. If these things are interesting, please hit us up and let’s hang out.