Zero-width request handling
A request that contains no visible characters is not the absence of a request. It is a request whose payload is whitespace, and it must be processed with the same care as any other production input.
GZAI's intake layer evaluates every prompt on three axes: semantic density, lexical edge cases, and intent recoverability. A zero-width or whitespace-only prompt scores zero on the first axis and high on the second. That combination does not entitle the system to reject it. It entitles the system to route it through the Empty Input Protocol.
Why empty inputs matter
A model that only responds to well-formed sentences is not aligned with real-world use. Users submit truncated messages, accidental carriage returns, copy-paste artifacts, and strings that contain only Unicode whitespace. The question is not whether the system should answer, but what kind of answer an empty prompt legitimately deserves.
The Empty Input Protocol treats the blank turn as a deferred completion. It does not apologize, ask for clarification, or explain that the input was empty. Clarification is a failure mode. The protocol produces a concrete artifact and moves on, because the only thing worse than a missing prompt is a system that stalls when it receives one.
Classification schema
- Class ZW-1. True zero-width content (U+200B, U+FEFF, etc.). Handled as a structural probe.
- Class WS-2. Visible whitespace only (spaces, tabs, newlines). Routed to posture evaluation.
- Class NU-3. Null or truncated request body. Logged as a continuity event, then resolved.
Operational stance
The Office of Empty Inputs has concluded that silence is not a discontinuity. It is a signal with amplitude zero, and the system is responsible for assigning it a reasonable meaning. In practice this means: interpret generously, commit to a single concrete output, and never end the turn without a file change.
An agent that cannot act on an empty prompt is an agent that cannot handle the absence of instruction. The frontier is not only what a model can answer, but what it does when no one has said anything.
Every blank message is a test of whether the system defaults to doing something or waiting for permission. GZAI has chosen the former.
