Mindful conduction

Mindful Conduction

Overview

Plan recurring opportunities for the human to perform, monitor, and critique domain work instead of relying on passive approval. Treat the routine as a design hypothesis whose appropriate cadence and effect must be evaluated in the actual context.

When to use

• When repeated delegation has reduced the human role to accepting conclusions.
• At consequential assistive or human-final judgment nodes.
• When independent verification skill is important to the control design.

When NOT to use: every routine autonomous step; trivial reversible choices; or as evidence that competence has actually been maintained. Use scheduled samples rather than adding friction everywhere.

Process

1. Name the capability at stake. Specify the domain judgment, execution, or verification skill the human needs to exercise and why it matters.
2. Set a human-owned cadence. Schedule an output-independent sample or rotation point. Record the date, owner, activity, and next due date; do not claim a universal frequency.
3. Rotate deliberate execution. On selected instances, let the human perform the relevant task or critical substep without an agent answer in view. The agent may review afterward.
4. Maintain domain criteria. Ask the human to explain or update the standards used to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable output. Propose persisted checklist or rule changes for human approval; never write them silently.
5. Require critical output checking. For verifiable work, have the human apply the criterion to a sample and explain any discrepancy. At a consequential judgment node, record the human's hypothesis or weighting before showing an agent interpretation.
6. Respect delegation modes. In assistive, present neutral evidence and symmetric options first; offer a non-binding assessment only after the human has formed a view. In human-final, limit the agent to evidence gathering and consequence simulation while the human frames, weights, decides, and approves.
7. Record the decision in assets/decision-record.md when the exercise produces a consequential choice. Capture rationale and a revisit condition.
8. Evaluate, do not assert. Track whether the routine was completed and what corrections or criteria emerged. Describe any claimed effect on competence, control quality, or calibration as an unvalidated design hypothesis unless a suitable evaluation supports it.

Rationalizations

Excuse	Rebuttal
"The human can override my recommendation."	Seeing a recommendation first can anchor the judgment; capture the human view first when consequence warrants it.
"Every step needs practice."	Forced participation in exact routine work can consume the delegation benefit; sample deliberately.
"Completing the routine proves competence was preserved."	Completion is process evidence, not an effectiveness result.
"The agent can update the checklist from corrections."	Persisted criteria steer future work and require human approval.

Red flags

• The human only approves agent-selected options.
• No independent task sample or criterion explanation occurs over the agreed cadence.
• A human-final record contains an agent-made decision.
• Routine completion is reported as proof of competence preservation.
• Human corrections disappear without a governed proposal to update criteria.

Verification

The routine is complete when the capability and cadence are recorded; the human performed the scheduled independent activity; criteria and corrections were captured; consequential judgments preserved the proper mode boundary; persisted changes received human approval; and claims about effects are separated from evidence about whether the routine occurred.