The Latency Dial Lives on the Macro

"A typo fix shouldn't wait to be told who you are. A rewrite in your voice can't happen without it."

Two Extremes of One Dial

Each macro carries a single switch — use the vault, or bypass it. 'The vault' is the personal context the brain can draw on: what it knows about you, your writing, your world. Turning it on makes the transformation richer and slower; bypassing it makes the transformation faster, shallower, and more private, because nothing personal is pulled in. That one switch is the most consequential tuning knob a macro has, and it's the reason a system-wide transformer can feel instant for small jobs and thoughtful for big ones.

Why It Lives Per Macro

The switch is per-macro because the right answer genuinely differs per transformation. Fixing spelling has nothing to do with who you are — dragging in your personal context would only add latency for zero benefit, so it bypasses. Rewriting a paragraph 'in my voice' is the opposite: without your context the result is generic, so it uses the vault and accepts the wait. A single global setting couldn't be right for both; the decision belongs to the macro, where the nature of the job is known.

MACRO         VAULT MODE     WHY
------------  -------------  --------------------------------
Correct       bypass         spelling doesn't need to know you
Translate     bypass         translation is context-free
Rewrite mine  use vault      'my voice' IS personal context
Prompt        use vault      open-ended; assume it may need you

The Sensible Defaults

New macros get a default that matches their likely nature. The seeded transformation macros — correct, translate, tighten — default to bypass, because utility transforms usually want speed and don't need you. The general-purpose Prompt macro defaults to use vault, because an open-ended instruction is exactly the case that might benefit from personal context. The defaults aren't a policy imposed on the user; they're a good first guess the user is free to change per macro.

Expose the latency-vs-knowledge dial; don't bury it in a global default. Speed and richness trade against each other, and the right point on that curve depends on the specific job. Hiding the tradeoff behind one global setting forces every transformation to accept the same compromise. Putting the dial on the unit of work — here, the macro — lets each job sit where it should, and makes the cost of context a visible, deliberate choice rather than a silent tax on everything.

Bypass is also a privacy posture, not just a speed one: when a macro bypasses the vault, no personal context is assembled or sent for that transformation at all. So the dial is doing double duty — it tunes latency and it scopes how much of 'you' is involved in a given strike. A fast macro is, by construction, also a more private one.

Code

The dial is one field, set per macro, explicit on every call·swift

// The seeded macros pick their default vault mode from their nature.
let seeded: [FlintMacro] = [
    .init(name: "Correct",  template: "Fix spelling and grammar:\n\n{input}",
          vault: .bypassVault),   // fast, context-free
    .init(name: "Translate", template: "Translate to Korean:\n\n{input}",
          vault: .bypassVault),
    .init(name: "Prompt",    template: "",   // open instruction, appends input
          vault: .useVault),      // open-ended -> assume it may need you
]

// At call time the chosen mode is sent explicitly (Track 4's contract):
brain.applyFree(prompt: rendered, vault: macro.vaultContextMode, tier: tier)

Exercise

For five macros — fix spelling, translate to Korean, summarize a long email, rewrite a message in the user's usual tone, and expand shorthand notes into full sentences — decide vault-use or bypass for each and justify it in one line. Then explain why this switch would be wrong as a single global setting, using two of your five as the conflicting cases.

Hint

Spelling, translate, and summarize are context-free -> bypass (speed, privacy). 'Rewrite in my tone' needs the vault -> use. Expanding shorthand is a judgment call depending on whether the notes reference personal context. A global setting is wrong because spelling and 'rewrite in my tone' pull in opposite directions: force both to bypass and the rewrite is generic; force both to use-vault and every typo fix pays for context it never needed.

The Latency Dial Lives on the Macro

Two Extremes of One Dial

Why It Lives Per Macro

The Sensible Defaults

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

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