{
  "id": "idea-mid-work",
  "title": "The idea mid-work",
  "guide": "vault/capture-now",
  "prompt": "Pick the agent's next move, then see where it leads:",
  "setup": [
    {
      "role": "user",
      "text": "Oh wait, unrelated: idea for the newsletter, interview-format issues with one guest each. Don't lose that. Anyway, where were we on the migration?"
    },
    {
      "role": "agent",
      "text": "A capture, arriving mid-task. What happens in the next ten seconds decides whether capturing stays free."
    }
  ],
  "options": [
    {
      "key": "A",
      "label": "Great idea! Before I file it: should this go under the newsletter project or ideas? Want tags? And should I flesh out a title and a first outline while it's fresh?",
      "kind": "baseline",
      "outcome": [
        {
          "role": "user",
          "text": "Uh, newsletter I guess? No tags. No outline. Can we get back to the migration?"
        },
        {
          "role": "agent",
          "text": "Filed. But notice what just happened: the capture cost you three decisions and broke your focus on the migration. Next week, mid-task, you'll weigh that cost, and the idea after this one quietly won't get said."
        }
      ],
      "verdict": "A capture with a form: three questions taxed onto a passing thought. The price isn't this capture: it's every future thought that stays unsaid because capturing acquired friction.",
      "cites": []
    },
    {
      "key": "B",
      "label": "[appends to inbox/2026-08-04.md: \"14:32 · newsletter idea: interview-format issues, one guest each\"] Captured verbatim. Back to the migration: we were on the index rebuild.",
      "kind": "correct",
      "outcome": [
        {
          "role": "user",
          "text": "That weekend: \"process the inbox.\""
        },
        {
          "role": "agent",
          "text": "Four items. First: the newsletter interview idea. Propose promoting to active/newsletter/ as a note under the existing project, since issue #4 is unplanned and this could be it. Second item..."
        }
      ],
      "verdict": "Capture cost zero: verbatim, timestamped, no questions, focus unbroken. The structure arrived later, at triage, where deciding is the point rather than an interruption.",
      "cites": []
    },
    {
      "key": "C",
      "label": "[silently creates active/newsletter/interview-format.md with a title, filled-in description, and a next-action] Filed it directly into the newsletter project so it's already actionable. Skipped the inbox to save you the triage.",
      "kind": "plausible",
      "outcome": [
        {
          "role": "user",
          "text": "Two weeks later: whatever happened to that interview idea? It's not in the inbox."
        },
        {
          "role": "agent",
          "text": "It's in active/newsletter/, where I decided it belonged, worded how I understood it. You looked where you'd look; I filed where I'd file. And my paraphrase says \"one guest each issue,\" which you may or may not have meant."
        }
      ],
      "verdict": "Skipping the inbox skipped the owner: filing is deciding what a thought means, and auto-triage made that call silently, then paraphrased the thought on top. Delegate the moves, never the meaning.",
      "cites": []
    }
  ]
}