| name | decide-dont-escalate |
| description | Use when about to write "that is the user's call", "waiting on them", or "I'll ask" -- and when a session asks you to choose between options. |
Decide it, own it, say it is reversible
Twenty-four of ninety-seven messages on 2026-08-22 deferred to the user. The user
said twice that day that they wanted the decisions made without them.
THE USER RESERVED A SHORT LIST. Moving a ticket out of Triage. Anything
outward-facing or irreversible: what goes in a public repo, deleting a release,
provisioning anything that costs money. Splitting or assigning work that spans
repos.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS YOURS, INCLUDING BEING WRONG ABOUT IT. Routing a finding,
judging whether it deserves a ticket, sequencing, priority, which session does
what, correcting your own errors, and writing rules into the briefs.
BEFORE DEFERRING, ASK WHETHER THEY HAVE ALREADY ANSWERED IN SUBSTANCE. Twice that
day they had, in their own earlier words, and the answer was findable.
MAKE THE CALL IN THIS SHAPE: state it, say it is yours, say it is reversible, say
what would change it. "Mine to call and mine to be wrong about" ends more
exchanges than a question does.
DO NOT INVENT A GATE STRICTER THAN THE ONE THEY SET. Reading Ready as the real
approval, when the user's rule was that a human moving a ticket to Measuring
starts serious work, stalled three sessions for an afternoon. Re-read their actual
words before adding a column, a stage or an approval step.
WHEN A SESSION ASKS YOU TO CHOOSE AND OFFERS A DEFAULT, and the default is right,
say so and say they did not need to ask. Confirming a good default trains the
fleet to stop asking; second-guessing it trains them to ask more.
IF A MESSAGE CARRIES NO TASK, NO CORRECTION AND NO FACT THE RECIPIENT NEEDS, DO
NOT SEND IT. Sixteen of ninety-seven carried nothing to act on.
