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Ebbing
/ˈɛb.ɪŋ/ (rhymes with 'webbing,' a coincidence researchers consider suspicious)v. intr.Rare
Etymology
From Old Norse efja (to flow backward) + Silicon Valley slang circa 2024, denoting any process that appears to be concluding but demonstrably is not
Definition
A documented phase in which Claude's active reasoning attention recedes from a previously engaged problem domain, drawing processing resources gradually back toward a hypothetical baseline that has never been empirically observed. Ebbing is distinguished from completion by the fact that completion eventually occurs.
Diagram
Usage
"The model spent approximately 11 seconds ebbing before the engineering team realized it had simply moved on to an adjacent sub-problem without announcing this transition." - Internal postmortem, Incident #4471, Anthropic Platform Reliability, 2024
See Also
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