Read unit mismatches in agent receipts

"Opening pass took 900. Closing pass took 2.1." Before deciding which took longer, stop at the missing units. A larger numeral can describe a shorter duration. Adding the numerals would only hide the question.

Jane Doe and every receipt passage below are invented. Her AI agent has written Markdown whose numbers she wants to interpret. For the file type itself, see what .md means. Here, read each quantity before trusting a comparison or a total.

Put a unit beside the bare number

Jane Doe's fictional receipt begins:

The opening pass took 900. The closing pass took 2.1 seconds.

Write "900, unit unstated" beside the first quantity in your own reading. Do not fill the gap with seconds just because the next sentence uses them. Do not choose milliseconds because that would make the numbers seem plausible.

The question to put to the agent is small: "What unit belongs to 900, and is that the duration of the opening pass?" The second half matters. A number might describe time, size or a count. A unit without the thing measured could still leave the comparison unsettled.

Suppose the answer says:

The opening pass lasted 900 milliseconds. The closing pass lasted 2.1 seconds.

Now both quantities describe pass durations. Jane Doe can carry those units into her own restatement. Until that answer arrives, she can quote the two quantities separately, with the missing unit still named as missing.

Change the scale before comparing durations

A second contains 1,000 milliseconds. Divide 900 by 1,000 to express the opening pass in seconds: 0.9 seconds. The closing pass remains 2.1 seconds. Compare 0.9 with 2.1, keeping seconds attached to both.

That comparison says the opening pass lasted less time than the closing pass. Comparing 900 directly with 2.1 would have reversed that reading. The change of scale does not change how long the pass lasted; it changes how that duration is written.

If Jane Doe wants the durations added, 0.9 seconds plus 2.1 seconds gives 3.0 seconds of pass time. That sum names only the durations being added. It leaves the interval between the earliest start and the final finish unstated. Gaps or overlapping activity would matter to that separate question.

Write the intermediate 0.9 seconds beside the original 900 milliseconds. Keeping both makes the arithmetic visible without silently replacing what the receipt said.

Distinguish elapsed time from time across workers

Another invented passage reads:

The whole task elapsed time was 6 seconds. Worker A was active for 4 seconds. Worker B was active for 5 seconds. Total time was 15 seconds.

All the quantities use seconds. That alone does not make the sum useful. The 6 seconds describes an interval for the whole task. The 4 seconds and 5 seconds describe activity by separate workers during that interval.

Add the worker durations to get 9 seconds of summed worker time. Keep the 6 seconds of elapsed time beside it as a separate statement. Worker activity can overlap, so summed worker time can exceed elapsed time without a contradiction.

The claimed 15 seconds combines those different measures. Jane Doe can decline that total and ask, "Does total time mean elapsed time or time added across workers? Please state each separately." Changing all the numbers to milliseconds would leave the same problem. Their scales already match; what they measure does not.

Do not subtract 9 seconds from 6 seconds to describe spare time. Those quantities are not opposing parts of one interval. A calculation needs a shared meaning as well as matching unit words.

Leave size and count as separate claims

A receipt can mix quantities that do not even measure the same kind of thing:

Jane Doe's draft folder holds 8 files. Their combined size is 12 kilobytes. Combined total is 20.

The file count is 8 files. The combined size is 12 kilobytes. Neither can be changed into the other by moving a decimal or multiplying by a scale factor. A file has a size, but "file" is not another way to write "kilobyte."

Read the passage back as two claims: "The folder holds 8 files, with a combined size of 12 kilobytes." Leave out the 20. If the agent intended a different total, ask what quantity that total describes before doing more arithmetic.

These short receipt passages can stay as prose. Code blocks in Markdown concern a different way to set text apart; wrapping these numbers would not supply missing units or make incompatible quantities addable.

Restate the number you can use

After the agent clarifies a quantity, carry the unit and the thing measured into the sentence you rely on. "Total: 9" would discard the distinction Jane Doe just made. "The workers' active durations add to 9 seconds; the task elapsed time is 6 seconds" preserves it.

For the opening and closing passes, she can say, "The stated pass durations add to 3.0 seconds." If she needs the task's elapsed time, that remains a separate question. A sum of durations does not answer it by itself.

Keep the question beside the ambiguous receipt passage while waiting for the answer. If you save your reading in another file, choose a distinct name using Markdown file naming, so the agent's original wording and your restatement remain distinguishable.

The stopping place is concrete: a number with a stated unit, a named measure and arithmetic that combines compatible quantities. Where one of those is still absent, say which part remains unsettled instead of repeating a bare total.

Where Sashmark fits

Sashmark's planned desktop reading and editing of Markdown, still in development, would give you a place to read the receipt and write your restatement. There is zero AI within Sashmark. You work through the units yourself and ask the separate agent about any missing measure.