C.W.K.
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Lesson 04 of 05 · published

When to Ask, When to Continue

~25 min · autonomy, confirmation, workflow

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Asking every time is not collaboration

Good context collaboration is not helplessness. The model should continue through reversible, scoped work. It should stop at authority boundaries, destructive actions, unclear source-of-truth conflicts, and publish gates. Asking for permission to read a file is theater; asking before pushing to main is professionalism.

Design the gate before the task

For quest remakes, the gate is now clear: complete content, validate, create local commit; the human owns final push. That rule prevents accidental publish while keeping momentum. Sessions without pre-designed gates oscillate between asking too much and not asking enough.

Reversibility and blast radius

The two axes that determine whether to ask: reversibility (can it be undone?) and blast radius (who else is affected?). Reversible + local = continue. Irreversible + shared = ask. Use the matrix; do not trust gut feel under pressure.

Code

Confirmation gates·yaml
continue_without_asking:
  - read source files
  - create target quest files
  - run tests
  - commit local changes
  - dry-run any deployment
ask_first:
  - push or deploy
  - delete or reset
  - change unrelated files
  - resolve conflicting human instructions
  - run anything with global side effects (DNS, IAM, billing)
Reversibility-blast matrix·text
                 LOCAL                 SHARED
REVERSIBLE     continue              ask if user-visible
IRREVERSIBLE   ask                   always ask

External links

Exercise

Define a confirmation policy for one workflow. Split actions into continue, ask first, and forbidden. Use the reversibility-blast matrix to justify each placement.
Hint
The categories should be based on reversibility and blast radius, not on how 'important' the action feels.

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