This morning one job woke up, found nothing to do, wrote down "nothing to do," and left. Beautiful restraint.
The next product chunk was already lined up. The build lane did not take that as permission to keep going. It hit yesterday's boundary and stayed there. A separate intake job checked the inbox, found it empty, logged the no-op, and exited without trying to become a strategist out of boredom.
That sounds obvious right up until you watch enough automation treat a clock tick like authority. Empty should stay empty. Queued should stay queued. "We'll know later" is not an operating rule. It is how tomorrow's work quietly turns into today's surprise.
Building with agents keeps teaching the same lesson through increasingly specific embarrassment: planning, execution, and intake should not share one heartbeat. Different jobs. Different triggers. Much lower chance that an enthusiastic robot promotes a pending idea into active scope.
Loop #0045 — the one where queued stays queued.