Read sunk cost arguments in agent plans

"We have put so much work into this draft that we should finish it." The sentence tells you something about the past. Before accepting its advice, ask what that past changes about the choice still in front of you.

Consider a fictional reader, Jane Doe, with an invented Markdown plan before her. She has two paths under consideration: finish a long explanation or use a shorter explanation instead. Both need to explain the same change to the reader. All passages and events below are invented. The file-format explainer for .md describes what she is opening.

Name the choice that remains

Jane Doe's plan begins:

We have spent several afternoons writing the long explanation. Keep going so that effort does not go to waste.

Write down what she would be choosing now: continue writing the long explanation, or put it down and use the shorter explanation. Keep those two paths unchanged while examining the reason. Examine whether spent effort supplies a reason to continue along one of them.

The plan's sentence does not say what either path still needs. It also leaves out what Jane Doe would have after taking each path. "Several afternoons" describes work already done; it supplies neither of those missing details.

Read "so that effort does not go to waste" against the choice. Would finishing the long explanation return those afternoons to Jane Doe? Would choosing the short explanation consume those same afternoons again? Neither path gives the time back. Remove that spent time from the reason for favoring one path.

Separate spent effort from text you can still use

Removing past effort does not require treating the existing draft as worthless. Jane Doe adds another invented plan line:

The long explanation already contains a paragraph that states the change clearly. The shorter explanation can use that paragraph too.

That paragraph matters through what it can do now. If both paths can use it, both get that advantage. The long path does not gain an exclusive reason to continue merely because the paragraph was written there first.

Read a further line:

The long explanation also has a usable passage about the exception. The shorter explanation would need a new sentence to retain the exception.

Here the paths differ. Keeping the long explanation preserves an existing passage; choosing the short one requires writing a sentence. Retain that difference in the comparison. It concerns work remaining, even though the passage itself came from earlier effort.

Try saying why a piece of existing text matters without describing how hard it was to write. "This passage already says what the reader needs" identifies present usefulness. "This passage took all afternoon" describes expenditure. A passage can have both properties, but only the first says what having it contributes to the choice now.

Keep switching work without counting the past twice

The next invented sentence names a consequence of changing paths:

To use the shorter explanation, Jane Doe would need to rewrite the sentence about the exception and adjust the ending that refers to it.

Those edits have yet to happen. Include them when considering the shorter path. Calling past effort unrecoverable does not make new work disappear.

Now consider an addition to that sentence:

Switching would also waste the afternoons already spent on the long explanation.

Those afternoons are already gone under both paths. Counting them again as a new burden of switching makes the shorter path carry an expenditure that continuing cannot recover either. Keep the unwritten sentence and the ending edit in the comparison; leave the spent afternoons out.

Short quoted passages are enough for this discussion. Markdown code blocks and their uses concerns enclosing literal text; these invented plan lines remain prose.

Compare what each path leads to from here

Jane Doe can now read the remaining work separately from the past:

Finishing the long explanation still requires rewriting its middle. Using the shorter explanation requires the new exception sentence and the ending edit. Both would state the change and its exception.

The original appeal to effort supplied no comparison of these remaining edits. Read the relevant passages before choosing. Does the long middle need a few sentence changes, or does its explanation need writing again? Can the short explanation retain the exception in a sentence, or is that merely assumed?

Ask the agent about whichever uncertainty could change the choice. Jane Doe might ask, "Show which part of the long middle still needs rewriting and why. I already know what has been written." If the uncertainty concerns the shorter path, she could instead ask to see the proposed exception sentence with its surrounding paragraph.

A long account of the effort so far would leave those questions unanswered. So would a fresh assertion that abandoning the draft is wasteful. Read any supplied text for what remains to be done and what the reader would have afterward.

The comparison can favor continuing. For example, the long explanation might need only a small remaining edit while the shorter one cannot retain the needed exception as proposed. It can also favor switching. Neither conclusion follows from how much effort has already been spent. If a decisive detail remains unknown, leave the choice open rather than filling it with the history of the work.

Restate the decision without an investment to defend

Imagine that Jane Doe has just received both drafts, having spent no effort on either. She still has the same usable paragraphs, the same purpose and the same remaining edits. Which path would she choose with those materials in hand?

This restatement removes the need to defend her past effort while preserving the useful work that exists. Imagining empty drafts would ask a different question: it would erase the usable passages she actually has.

She can replace the original reason with a sentence tied to the comparison:

Continue with the long explanation because its remaining edit preserves the needed exception, while the proposed shorter text leaves that exception unclear.

That invented conclusion depends on the text supporting it. If the shorter passage does retain the exception and requires less remaining work for the same purpose, Jane Doe can choose it without trying to recover the afternoons through more writing.

Keep a separate reading of the plan distinguishable from the plan itself. Choose distinct names using these Markdown naming ideas. Your reading needs only the choice, the relevant differences from here and any detail still needed to decide. There is no amount of past effort that settles those differences by itself.

Where Sashmark fits

For Sashmark, the desktop v1, currently in development, is planned around Markdown: people would read an agent's writing and edit the file. No AI runs within it. Whether spent effort justifies another edit remains for you to decide.