Claim LD03-SL-C12 (v1.0)

On 18 real tasks from two open-source repositories, an AI agent's code passed the maintainers' tests 38% of the time, but none of the 15 pull requests METR reviewed by hand could be merged as is; METR roughly estimated 26 minutes of human repair even for those that passed, about a third of the original human time.

Provenance and status

Claim type: ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status: ELIGIBLE (QUALIFIED) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER”)
Verification state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (as printed: “CONTENT VERIFIED”; verified by: UNKNOWN)
Does not license: A general rate for current agents; an estimate of developer productivity
Source (field 6, as printed): Rein, “Research Update: Algorithmic vs. Holistic Evaluation,” METR, 13 August 2025
Source type (field 7): INDEPENDENT_RESEARCH_REPORT (as printed: “Research nonprofit post”)
Institutional position: Independent research nonprofit
Maturity (claim evidence / publication maturity): EMERGING (as printed: “EMERGING”)
Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern relation is recorded on its Sources.

Version

Pinned version v1.0 (entry LD03-SL-C12--v1.0) — this page never floats to newer evidence.

This pinned version is also the current version.

Versions:v1.0 · current

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Rein, “Research Update: Algorithmic vs. Holistic Evaluation,” METR, 13 August 2025” → SRC-SL-REIN-METR-ALGORITHMIC-HOLISTIC-2025-08-13--v1.0 — Rein, “Research Update: Algorithmic vs. Holistic Evaluation,” METR, 13 August 2025; class INDEPENDENT_RESEARCH_REPORT (explicit public provenance pin)

All 25 canonical Claim fields (raw values and normalized values)

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD03-SL-C12	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	On 18 real tasks from two open-source repositories, an AI agent's code passed the maintainers' tests 38% of the time, but none of the 15 pull requests METR reviewed by hand could be merged as is; METR roughly estimated 26 minutes of human repair even for those that passed, about a third of the original human time.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	C — Work reorganization and verification	—
5	MATURITY	EMERGING	states: EMERGING
6	SOURCE	Rein, “Research Update: Algorithmic vs. Holistic Evaluation,” METR, 13 August 2025	source_ids: SRC-SL-REIN-METR-ALGORITHMIC-HOLISTIC-2025-08-13
7	SOURCE TYPE	Research nonprofit post	classes: INDEPENDENT_RESEARCH_REPORT
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Independent research nonprofit	—
9	SCOPE	Two open-source repositories; tasks taking humans 20 minutes to four hours	—
10	DESIGN	Small evaluation of agent output against tests and manual review	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	18 tasks; 15 pull requests reviewed manually	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	An agent using Claude 3.7 Sonnet	—
13	COMPARATOR	Maintainer-written tests versus holistic review	—
14	MAIN RESULT	38% (±19%) pass maintainer tests; none of the 15 reviewed pull requests mergeable as is; estimated repair time 42 minutes on average and 26 minutes for test-passing pull requests	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	The gap between passing automated checks and producing work an organization can use	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	A general rate for current agents; an estimate of developer productivity	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Very small sample; repair times are rough subjective estimates by METR, not by the maintainers; one older model	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	Consistent with persistent quality costs after AI adoption in open-source projects	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	Not checked / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Not analysed in this claim	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-03, D2	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Larger evaluations with current agents and maintainer-made repair estimates	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: QUALIFIED
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-15	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-03 (LIVING_DEBATE); D2 (DOMAIN)

Cited by Living Debate versions

LD-03 v0.1

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 5e3fa5d5b2ce328f76c7b2b4ab914767dcd320a271ab506b81c78cbbdfc32883.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD03-SL-C12 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-15; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-03 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-03 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 12 — LD03-SL-C12” SHA-256 495c637b9c6c1f8216df23fb98de0a3f8576ca7414de54d8959f01b7ee5055ad; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD03-SL-C12--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD03-SL-C12 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-03 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD03-SL-C12 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-15); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-03 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-03 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-REIN-METR-ALGORITHMIC-HOLISTIC-2025-08-13--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 12 — LD03-SL-C12 cites "Rein, “Research Update: Algorithmic vs. Holistic Evaluation,” METR, 13 August 2025"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-REIN-METR-ALGORITHMIC-HOLISTIC-2025-08-13--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Rein, “Research Update: Algorithmic vs. Holistic Evaluation,” METR, 13 August 2025".