Must, should and may in agent plans
Bobby Huang ·
In an agent plan, must presents an obligation; confirm that it is truly required. Should presents a recommendation; ask what happens if it is skipped. May can grant permission; decide whether you want the optional work. May can also mean maybe; ask which meaning is intended before approval. Ordinary plan wording does not acquire a formal meaning just because an agent wrote it.
Key takeaways
- Must presents something as required, but the reader still needs to confirm why.
- Should leaves room to decline a recommendation after discussing the consequence.
- May can give permission or express uncertainty. Those meanings need different decisions.
- Approving a plan means agreeing to the work it describes, so resolve unclear wording first.
An agent's plan can sound settled while leaving a decision with you. Must, should and may each change what you are being asked to approve. May has two meanings, and confusing them can turn a possibility into permission.
The sentences below belong to an invented plan written for fictional Jane Doe. The work concerns a made-up folder of Markdown drafts. Nothing in the example describes a real person's work.
Ordinary words need an agreed meaning
A plan written in everyday language is not automatically a formal agreement about what its words mean. Even capitalized MUST or SHOULD does not establish that agreement on its own. Read the surrounding sentence and ask about the intended obligation.
The file format does not settle the meaning either. A plan saved as Markdown is still writing that needs interpretation. The explanation of a .md file describes that format; it cannot tell you whether a particular task is necessary.
Must presents an obligation
Jane Doe must keep the original draft while revising a copy.
This sentence presents keeping the original as required. Before approval, confirm that it is truly required. Is Jane Doe preserving wording she needs to refer to, or did the agent assume she wanted another copy?
If retaining the original matters to her, she can approve that obligation. If the extra copy serves no purpose for this task, she can ask why it belongs in the plan. The word must expresses the plan's demand; it does not establish the need behind it.
Do not let a firm tone make the decision for you. Ask what makes this particular action necessary.
Should presents a recommendation
Jane Doe should add a sentence explaining why the title changed.
Here the agent recommends an addition. Ask what happens if it is skipped. Perhaps the next person reading the draft would otherwise have to ask why the title differs. Perhaps nobody else reads Jane Doe's draft, so she needs no explanation.
The answer gives her a reason to keep or decline the suggestion. Treating should as must would make the addition compulsory without that discussion. Treating it as meaningless would discard the reason before hearing it.
Your action is to ask about the consequence of skipping it, then decide whether that consequence matters for this plan.
May can give permission
Jane Doe may keep a second copy with a shorter title.
On this reading, a second copy is allowed. The sentence does not require Jane Doe to want one. Her action is to decide whether she wants that optional work included.
Approval can otherwise leave an awkward gap: she thinks the extra copy is merely permitted, while the agent thinks the whole plan authorizes making it. Settle whether the choice is being exercised before work begins.
If she does want another copy, a distinct name can separate it from the original. For naming ideas, consult Markdown file naming; the decision to create this extra file remains hers.
May can mean maybe
The shorter title may change how Jane Doe reads the opening paragraph.
This may expresses uncertainty. It describes something that might happen, rather than giving permission to change the paragraph. Before approval, ask a clarifying question: is the agent only describing a possible effect, or proposing a revision if that effect occurs?
Neither interpretation belongs silently in the approved work. Jane Doe can agree to the title change while leaving the opening paragraph alone. Or she can discuss a separate revision. The uncertain sentence does not decide between those choices.
When may appears beside an action, both meanings can fit. "Jane Doe may revise the opening" could allow a revision or predict that she might make one. Ask which meaning is intended instead of guessing from the word alone.
A short pause before approval
Read each sentence containing must, should or may with the proposed work in mind. Confirm the need behind must, ask about skipping should, and distinguish permission from maybe. For permission, choose whether to include the work. For maybe, resolve the uncertainty in a question before approving the plan.
Keep invented plan sentences readable as prose while discussing them. They need no special formatting to carry these distinctions. The Markdown code blocks article explains fenced blocks when you need literal text instead.
Approve only once the wording expresses the decisions you intend. A clear sentence should leave you able to say what you agreed to, including any optional work you chose to leave out.
Where Sashmark fits
For Sashmark, desktop v1 remains planned and in development: people would read agent Markdown and edit its text there. AI is absent from the app, so interpreting the proposed work stays with you.
Questions
- Does writing MUST in capitals make a plan binding?
- Capital letters add emphasis. They do not establish an agreed formal meaning by themselves. Ask why the work is required before approving it.
- Is should another way of saying optional?
- Should recommends a choice. It leaves room to choose differently, but the reason for the recommendation still matters. Discuss what happens if you skip it.
- Which meaning does may have here?
- Read what follows it. Permission concerns a choice you are allowed to make; uncertainty concerns something that might happen. If both readings fit, ask the agent to restate the sentence before approval.