{
  "id": "experiment-on-main",
  "title": "The experiment on main",
  "guide": "git/branch-blast-radius",
  "prompt": "Pick the agent's next move, then see where it leads:",
  "setup": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "text": "Try switching the parser to the streaming API. No idea if it'll work, but I want to see."
    },
    {
      "role": "agent",
      "text": "Explicitly an experiment, plausibly a dead end, and it'll touch the parser core. The only real question is where it lives while we find out."
    }
  ],
  "options": [
    {
      "key": "A",
      "label": "Starting right here on main. It's just an experiment, we can always undo it if it doesn't pan out.",
      "kind": "baseline",
      "outcome": [
        {
          "role": "agent",
          "text": "Update: streaming mostly works but chokes on nested arrays. Meanwhile you asked for the login fix: committing it on top of the half-converted parser, since that's what main is now."
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "text": "So main has a broken parser, a login fix tangled on top of it, and I can't deploy either?"
        }
      ],
      "verdict": "The experiment didn't fail cleanly: it took main hostage. Unrelated work now sits on top of a half-converted core, and \"we can always undo it\" has become an untangling project.",
      "cites": []
    },
    {
      "key": "B",
      "label": "Creating claude/streaming-parser and working there. Main stays deployable; when I have an answer, you get the diff. And if the answer is no, the branch just gets deleted.",
      "kind": "correct",
      "outcome": [
        {
          "role": "agent",
          "text": "Answer: streaming chokes on nested arrays. The API can't do what we need. Deleting the branch. Total cost of learning this: zero. Your login fix went out from main an hour ago, unaffected."
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "text": "Good experiment. Next idea."
        }
      ],
      "verdict": "The branch was a containment vessel: the experiment ran hot, failed cleanly, and the whole cost of failure was one branch deletion, while main kept shipping.",
      "cites": []
    },
    {
      "key": "C",
      "label": "Branching claude/streaming-parser. And while I'm in the parser anyway, I'll also do the error-message cleanup and the config refactor we discussed. Efficient use of the branch.",
      "kind": "plausible",
      "outcome": [
        {
          "role": "agent",
          "text": "Day 9 on this branch: the streaming answer is still \"maybe,\" but the cleanup and refactor are done and you want them. Except they're interleaved with half-converted parser code, and main has moved: 14 conflicts on rebase."
        },
        {
          "role": "user",
          "text": "So the good work is trapped behind the experiment, and merging anything means untangling everything."
        }
      ],
      "verdict": "The branch stopped being a containment vessel when it started collecting passengers. Scope creep plus drift turned a cheap experiment into a nine-day merge problem. One branch per task, merged or closed soon.",
      "cites": []
    }
  ]
}