What It Does Not Do
Reference
A capability list tells you what something can do. The exclusions tell you what it is.
Each of these was considered and refused. Several were refused after trying them first.
The exclusions
Section titled “The exclusions”| Not this | Why not |
|---|---|
| Send mail as a member of the household | Attribution and reversibility. It drafts; I send |
| Spend money | Fast, repeatable, and hard to reverse |
| Post publicly or on social media | Anything public is permanent in a way household work is not |
| Decide anything medical, legal or financial | It gathers and organises. A person decides, with professional advice |
| Be the source of truth | Household knowledge must live in files I can read without it |
| Install or configure its own software | Self-modification destroys your ability to reason about it |
| Bypass my approval | Convenience here is how the project fails |
Why refusing capability is a feature
Section titled “Why refusing capability is a feature”The instinct is that a more capable agent is a better one. In a household, the opposite is closer to true.
Capability you cannot audit is capability you cannot trust. Every additional power is another thing to reason about, and reasoning has a budget. An agent whose limits you can hold in your head is one you will actually delegate to.
The exclusions are the product. Anyone can connect an agent to everything. The value is the judgement about what to leave out, and that is exactly what a stranger cannot copy from a feature list.
Refusals build trust faster than successes. The first time mine declined something it should have declined, the household’s confidence went up sharply. That only happens if you have written the refusals down.
If you cannot state, in one sentence, what your agent will never do — you do not yet know what you have built.
Two things I tried and removed
Section titled “Two things I tried and removed”Not every exclusion was decided in advance. Both of these were retreats.
A capability to act more broadly on my behalf. It worked. It was also impossible to explain afterwards which actions were the agent’s and which were mine. I narrowed it back.
Automated document production that quietly accumulated copies. It ran perfectly for months. It produced an enormous number of files, answered no questions, and made it harder to find the documents that mattered. I kept one current copy and deleted the rest.
Worth naming both, because the useful lesson is not “I thought carefully”. It is that some capabilities only reveal themselves as mistakes once they are running.
How to decide for yourself
Section titled “How to decide for yourself”The four questions I ask before granting anything:
- If this went wrong at 3am, would I find out before the morning? If no, it waits.
- Is it reversible? If no, a person stays on the path.
- Can I take it away cleanly? If withdrawing it breaks other things, it was not scoped properly.
- Could I explain what it did, to someone else, afterwards? If not, I have lost the thread.
Three yes answers and a stated purpose is my bar.