Manual on purpose

magus could automate each row below, and does not. Each is a place the human in the loop stays one.

All four would be cheap to build, and cheap is not the test. The test for any future row: does automating the step remove a repetition, or remove a rep? A repetition (the same build run again for no new information) is the tool's to eat, and the cache exists to eat it. A rep (reading the failure, deciding what it means, choosing what lands) is where judgment forms. When a workflow is tuned so far that its operator no longer forms the judgment it depends on, it has automated the wrong half. Each row above removes the person at the point where the mechanism needs their judgment, so each stays out.

Sending a review is the newest of them and the one with the most to give away, so its refusals are worth naming: no review command carries a --publish flag, a self-review is always a comment rather than an approval, and authorship is stamped from the transport a write arrived on rather than from what the writer claims. A batch waits for a person because publishing is one outward-facing act. A call per remark would turn the one act a person confirms into a series of small ones nobody does.

Enforced by

• No review command carries a --publish flag.
• session dispose takes a typed id.
• Notes have no author field; authorship rides version control.

Good

The cache eats the repetition:

magus run test .
magus run test .

The second run replays; nothing new was learned by running it again.

Bad

magus session dispose --all --yes

magus has no such flag, on purpose. It would answer every open request without reading one, which is the rep the request existed to make someone do.

See also

• Human in the loop
• The loop keeps you able to notice
• Review