Where NCT-style continuity is genuinely required in deployment

Determine which application domains genuinely require Narrative Continuity Test-level identity persistence and which do not, distinguishing contexts such as companionship, clinical, educational, and customer-service assistants from purely transactional tools.

Background

The paper emphasizes that not every application needs narrative continuity; for example, calculators do not, while companions or customer-service assistants plausibly do. However, the precise boundary of necessity is not specified and is identified as an open area for investigation.

Clarifying where continuity is required informs both evaluation design and deployment governance, aligning system promises with the architectural capabilities needed to maintain identity-related commitments over time.

References

Additional questions— whether stateless architectures could qualify (§4.4) and where continuity is genuinely required (§4.4, §5.2)—remain open for investigation.

— The Narrative Continuity Test: A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Identity Persistence in AI Systems  (2510.24831 - Natangelo, 28 Oct 2025) in Section 6 (Discussion & Conclusion), Research agenda

Whether this makes the arrangement better or worse for the person is not obvious, and we do not claim to settle it.

— Matched Starts, Divergent Objects: How Human-AI Collaboration Forms What It Explains  (2609.04542 - Çögenli, 3 Sep 2026) in Supplementary Appendix A, Section A5.2, p. 65