Spot false either-or choices in agent plans

"Either we rewrite everything or we drop the goal." Before agreeing, pause at the gap between those paths. Does the goal really depend on rewriting everything? Or has the plan left a smaller piece of work unmentioned?

All plan lines below are invented for fictional Jane Doe. Her goal is to make the opening of a Markdown draft easier to follow. The draft, its sections and its limits are made up too. For format background, consult the .md file introduction.

Separate conflict from missing choices

Two actions can conflict without excluding every alternative. Replacing an opening paragraph and keeping that paragraph untouched cannot both happen to the same copy. That says nothing about whether changing one sentence would be enough.

Read this invented line with those two questions apart:

Either Jane Doe replaces the entire opening or leaves the entire opening untouched.

Both paths cannot happen together in that copy. Yet a partial revision fits neither path. The choice excludes a possibility merely by describing each side as all or nothing.

Now compare a narrower choice:

Jane Doe either approves this exact revision or does not approve this exact revision.

For approval of that exact revision, those two answers include every possibility. Asking for a different revision belongs outside that narrow question. Before accepting such wording, decide whether approving the exact revision is the decision you intended to make. A narrow question can be complete while still leaving the wider goal unsettled.

Try one smaller step

Return to the opening that Jane Doe wants to change. The invented plan takes a larger leap:

Either Jane Doe rewrites the whole draft or abandons the aim of a clearer opening.

Try changing only the opening sentence. That is a third path: it preserves the aim without accepting the full rewrite. Ask whether that sentence carries the difficulty, and whether changing it leaves the rest readable.

Do not treat a smaller edit as enough simply because it is smaller. If the opening depends on an explanation buried elsewhere, a single sentence might leave the difficulty intact. Keep the third path tied to the actual aim. Judge the smaller edit by whether the opening reads clearly afterward.

Try a later step or a mix

A plan can hide a timing choice inside a choice about scope:

Either Jane Doe revises every section now or gives up revising the draft.

Consider revising the opening now and leaving the remaining sections for later. Ask whether anything requires all sections to change together. If nothing does, the proposed timing has excluded work that could happen in separate steps.

A mix also deserves a look. Jane Doe could keep the existing first paragraph, revise the second, and leave the rest alone. That differs from both replacing everything and touching nothing. It is worth discussing if the difficulty sits in the second paragraph.

A later step is not a useful escape when waiting defeats the goal. Nor does a mix work if the untouched passage depends on the revised passage in a way that no longer makes sense. Ask about those limits rather than assuming the third path wins.

Read the reasons before approving

Take one short pass through the choice sentence. Say the goal in your own words, then separate whether the two paths conflict from whether anything else fits. Try one concrete alternative: smaller, later, or mixed. Ask the agent what it ruled out and why. Read the explanation against the limits you actually agreed to before approving.

"There are only two options" repeats the choice; the missing paths remain unexplained. A useful explanation names what prevents the smaller edit or the later work. For Jane Doe, that could be a dependency between passages. Ask which passages depend on each other and what would stop making sense.

You need neither an endless collection of options nor a third path at any cost. Stop once the missing alternative has a clear answer. If the reason for excluding it holds, return to the original choice. If it remains workable, ask for the plan to include it before approval.

Keep the plan line and the discussion readable as ordinary paragraphs. Fenced Markdown blocks serve a different need when literal text matters; these short lines need no such wrapper. If you retain a separate revised plan, choose a name that distinguishes its purpose using Markdown file naming.

Where Sashmark fits

Sashmark is being developed for reading Markdown such as these agent plans and editing it on your desktop. This v1 is planned and in development. No AI operates inside the app; considering an omitted path stays with you.