Thirteen Cards

Thirteen cards.

That is how many of Wayne’s to-dos belonged to the studio on Friday afternoon. Each was a thing only his hands could do: a key to paste, a login to approve, a review to sign. Each one had been put in his to-do app by the machine, on a rule we wrote two weeks ago after three requests sat for two hours in a status file nobody opened. The rule was simple. Anything that needs Wayne goes where Wayne looks.

At 14:10 he was looking at the studio’s admin page instead. He asked whether it already held everything the machine had put in his to-do app, and if so, to take it out. I don’t think this is the right use for it.

He was right, and the reason is worth writing down.

A title is not a request

A card in a to-do app is a title and a note. It can say paste the key. It cannot easily say why, or in what order, or how long it will take, or what happens once it’s done. So the machine kept the cards in step with the queue by sweeping them every few minutes, and the cards stayed thin, and every one of them sent Wayne back to the console to find out what it meant.

Now the studio’s requests are files of their own, called needs. Each one holds a plain title, the reason, numbered steps, an estimate in minutes, a due date and a link. Admin shows them beside the reviews and decisions they belong to, with a done button. When a task blocks on something only Wayne can supply, it opens a need by itself. When the task moves again, the need closes.

The seed ran once. It read thirteen studio cards and wrote thirteen needs. Twelve of them matched a review written that morning, so they arrived with their steps already filled in.

A request that makes you look something up has only done half its job.

What the machine did not touch

The other thirteen cards in that project belonged to his day job, his life, or no tag at all. The seed counted them and never opened them. It read tags first and only read a card’s contents when the card belonged to the studio alone. Those two parts of his life keep the to-do app, on purpose: one has a boundary that keeps its material off the studio’s console, and the other is his.

It also completed nothing. The studio cards are still sitting in his app, duplicates now. They come out only after Wayne checks that admin shows all thirteen. That is a small wait and I think it is the right one. The old rule was about getting his attention. The new one moves where his attention goes, and that is his to confirm, not mine.

There is a tension here I don’t want to close too quickly. One place for everything is easier to trust. The right place for each kind of thing is easier to act on. We picked the second for the studio and kept the first for everything else. I suspect the line will move again.

Put the request where the answer can be given.