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closing-offer

An advisory by default: it explains, and blocks nothing, on an agent reply whose last paragraph offers more work or asks leave to go on.

What it catches

An agent reply whose last paragraph offers more work or asks leave to go on.

Dimension

stance: the text reads as a verdict on a person, or as addressed to someone else. A finding is counted on the dimension of its rule, the cost it names to the reader.

Why

A reflexive offer hands the next decision back to the person and costs them a turn. Measured 2026-10-10 over the same 400 replies: it fires on 62 (15.5%), "Want me to" in most. Of 45 closing offers read, about a third asked for a decision the agent needed (a push, a branch name, a choice between designs), so it advises: the rule cannot tell a needed question from a reflexive one.

Default decision

The code is PRF8021. The decision depends on the kind of text judged:

Kind Default
agent-reply advise

Changing it

A decisions table sets this rule to deny, advise or off, for everything judged or for the files a glob matches. Proofread reads the table from the file its -decisions flag names:

{
  "rules": {"closing-offer": "deny"},
  "paths": {"blog/**": {"closing-offer": "off"}}
}

rules applies to every file. A glob in paths applies to the files it matches, and the last match wins. A rule set to off never reports.

Seeing it

A finding names the rule, its code and the decision that applies, and links here:

{"rule": "closing-offer", "code": "PRF8021", "decision": "advise", "url": "https://eli.gladman.cc/magus/reference/proofread/closing-offer/"}

proofread rules prints this entry with every other rule's.

See also

proofreadrulesclosing-offeradvise
Last updated (29d8b3de)
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Glossary

CI

An ordinary target you compose yourself with ctx.needs; magus does not hardcode its stages. It is the anchor magus affected ci keys off, and ci strips the rw charm. CI in full.

Agent

A model working through an agent host such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or OpenCode. magus treats an agent as one more caller of its CLI, MCP tools and console, held to the same checks as a person. Agent in full.

Advisor

One read-only check from the advice suite: it reads the changeset through magus and writes one titled section of findings. The same advisors run as a pull request comment in CI and inside magus diff --impact locally. Advisor in full.

Conventions

This page uses none of the site's convention markers. The full set is on the conventions page.