{
  "id": "agency.capacity",
  "term": "agency",
  "sense": "capacity",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 20,
  "arena": "agency",
  "domain": "A1",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "the ability to cause action",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "ability.capacity",
      "action.deed",
      "cause.reason"
    ],
    "interaction": "the ability and the action together, when linked by a cause, produce change through intentional direction",
    "novel_properties": [
      "intentional change",
      "directed causation",
      "initiated effect"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The Mars rover Perseverance drilled into Jezero Crater's bedrock on August 6, 2021, capturing a sample for future return to Earth.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2008, the Federal Reserve invoked emergency powers to lend $85 billion to AIG, altering financial market trajectories.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "CRISPR-Cas9 edited the HBB gene in hematopoietic stem cells to cure sickle cell disease in a 2023 clinical trial.",
      "domain": "biology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "ability.capacity",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "action.deed",
      "note": "abstracts",
      "type": "abstracts"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "agencies",
    "agency"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "added cause.reason to components as it is essential for 'causing' in agency; the original definition was correct but incomplete in its declared dependencies"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-agency.capacity"
}