FIELD NOTE / INSTAGRAM
Review the decision before the thousand-line diff.
The complete written thought and the evidence behind it. The video edition will follow its public release.
The written argument is here.
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Review the decision before the thousand-line diff.
Video caption
Review the decision before the thousand-line diff.
A default fills in the business rule you never decided.
Outcome, authority, alternatives, falsifier, rollback.
Test the consequential branch outside the patch.
#EricFieldNotes
Full written post / accessibility read
Agent-written code can arrive as a large, coherent patch. That makes the architecture question easier to skip. What user outcome did the team choose, who owns the exception, and what test would show the choice is wrong?
Imagine an agent building a refund route. The happy path is clean, but nobody decided who may override a disputed case. The code chooses the existing default role. The pull request is syntactically sound while the product's authority model remains accidental.
Before coding, name the target user result, allowed actors, rejected options, the fixture that would overturn the choice and the rollback condition. After the agent patches, compare the effectful path and external test against that packet.
Require the decision owner to sign the authority rule and a protected fixture to exercise the disputed case. Do this because beautiful code is valuable only when it implements the product choice the business actually intended.
#EricFieldNotes
Four-beat scene transcript
1. Review the decision before the thousand-line diff.
Agent-written code can arrive as a large, coherent patch. That makes the architecture question easier to skip. What user outcome did the team choose, who owns the exception, and what test would show the choice is wrong?
Visual: A tidy implementation can hide an unchosen policy.
2. The blank cell becomes production behavior.
Imagine an agent building a refund route. The happy path is clean, but nobody decided who may override a disputed case. The code chooses the existing default role. The pull request is syntactically sound while the product's authority model remains accidental.
Visual: A default fills in the business rule you never decided.
3. Use a one-page decision packet.
Before coding, name the target user result, allowed actors, rejected options, the fixture that would overturn the choice and the rollback condition. After the agent patches, compare the effectful path and external test against that packet.
Visual: Outcome, authority, alternatives, falsifier, rollback.
4. Make code review follow the choice.
Require the decision owner to sign the authority rule and a protected fixture to exercise the disputed case. Do this because beautiful code is valuable only when it implements the product choice the business actually intended.
Visual: Test the consequential branch outside the patch.
Research and claim limits
The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.