ROUND 376 — Bloome counting video: visible sequence and trace limits
Research date: 2026-09-06 UTC
Previous375: progress, Bloome lead and public artifact identified.

RESULT
Recovered and visually inspected the public counting demonstration linked by Bloome's engineering article. The displayed collaboration-on conversation contains1–20 in order under four alternating agent names. The comparison conversation contains repeated starts, conversational chatter and a final8. This advances from a written demonstration claim to a preserved visual artifact. It does not establish raw execution, independent model identities or causal effectiveness of the protocol.

SOURCES
https://bloome.im/blog/agent-collaboration-protocol
https://seo-content.bloome.im/agent-collaboration-counting-demo-v1.mp4
Video HTTP200,161626bytes,1280x720,H.264,254frames,25.4seconds,one video stream and no audio stream. Container metadata gives format brands, not an authenticated creation date or execution provenance.

INSPECTION
Decoded with PyAV and extracted frames0,30,60,90,120,150,180,210,240,253 at three-second intervals plus the final frame. Viewed a contact sheet and full-resolution frames120 and253. The samples cover the early and late displayed sequence with overlap at10. This is sampled visual inspection, not frame-by-frame validation of every transition.

The clip is an annotated side-by-side presentation: collaboration-off on the left, collaboration-on on the right. Captions state that the left stops at8 and the right continues to20. The frames themselves support that displayed contrast.
At12seconds, the right pane shows:
 Product Agent1, Reliability Agent2, GTM Agent3, Synthesis Agent4,
 Product5, Reliability6, GTM7, Synthesis8, Product9, Reliability10.
At25.3seconds the right pane shows the continuation:
 Reliability10, GTM11, Synthesis12, Product13, Reliability14,
 GTM15, Synthesis16, Product17, Reliability18, GTM19, Synthesis20.
Thus four visible speakers cycle across the numbered outputs. A fifth participant in the room count is consistent with the requesting user; the room count is not five verified autonomous workers.

The left pane shows multiple1s and2s, a role-allocation suggestion, later4, a textual proposal to take5, then6 and8. Its last visible Product Agent message says it will wait for the next agent. The video ending there does not prove how long it stalled or whether a later unshown response arrived.

LIMITS
The artifact shows a presented UI conversation, not raw provider calls. It could be an edited screen capture, a reconstruction, or a scripted demonstration; no provenance establishing which was recovered. The25.4-second media duration is not a verified wall-clock execution time. Neither side supplies model identifiers, prompt versions, runtime configuration, task versions, request IDs or trial statistics in the inspected frames.
The neat four-agent cycle is evidence of the displayed order, not evidence that agents independently chose turns without central control. The article's architectural explanation remains a publisher account. A successful serial counting example also cannot establish general reliability on parallel tasks, code work or a sustained autonomous swarm.

NEXT EVIDENCE THAT WOULD MATTER
Public demo-generation source or raw conversation export joined to provider/request records; exact configuration difference between the two sides; repeated-trial results; a public trace for Ford's claimed audit sub-agent from375. None was recovered in this round. Bloome remains an intentional multi-agent collaboration candidate with self-reported Shenzhen context, not a confirmed escaped swarm or Chinese-lab attribution.

PRESERVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
376-private retains the original video, fetch metadata, media metadata, sampled PNGs, contact sheet and frame/time index. Analysis report published separately. ffprobe was unavailable; PyAV and Pillow were installed under /tmp/china-video-tools solely for local media decoding. No investigated code executed, app installed, account created or message sent. Existing network access retrieved the artifact without additional infrastructure.