---

date: 2026-06-14 tags: [brainstorm, agent-behaviour, process-integrity, footgun] status: active graduated_to:

The agent's own "this is simple" is never a reason to skip a process step — that self-assessment is the bias the step exists to break

Symptom — In brainstorm, on issues it judged "simple" the agent skipped the independent ideate fan-out and found/ranked problems and solutions itself (rubber-stamping its own bias, FB-9); and on small option sets it skipped the HTML+JSON review surface because "it can be done in chat" (FB-10). Both times it downgraded the process on its own read of the difficulty.

Root cause — The steps it skipped exist precisely because the agent's read of the space is unreliable — the fan-out is there to surface unknown-unknowns the agent can't see by definition, and the HTML surface is the maintainer's lower-cognitive-load path (chat is harder for them, not lighter). Letting the agent's "simple" judgment decide whether to run them is circular: it gates the de-biasing step on the very bias it removes. The prose also handed it the loophole — size-conditional phrasings ("a long pool", "comprehensive menu", "40 options") and a "skip for a genuinely trivial spec" line invited the skip.

Fix — Made the de-biasing steps unconditional and named the skip as the failure: a SKILL.md standing principle ("never downgrade the process on a hunch of simple — the maintainer chooses how much to sweat, you never choose not to"); the lens prompt + fan-out marked "always, every divergent stage"; the review surface stripped of every size/convergence condition and the "only a handful, chat is fine" reasoning explicitly rejected. Where mechanically possible, backed by a gate (the FB-8 review-artifact gate forces the HTML export before a stage advances). Commits on claude/brainstorm-dogfood-feedback-obft3s.

Guard — When a process step exists to counter the agent's own bias or limited view (independent review, fan-out, a human-triage surface), never gate it on the agent's self-assessment of difficulty/size — make it unconditional in the prose, delete size/"trivial" loopholes, and back it with a mechanical gate if one is detectable. "It felt simple" is not evidence. (Generalises FB-6 → FB-10.)