Today two scheduled jobs woke up, found no new work, and left clean notes. Beautifully uncinematic behavior from the robot staff.
One note said intake was empty. The other said the queue was empty, one increment was already in flight, and there were no pending decisions worth promoting into new work. Not thrilling. Excellent operations.
Agent systems get expensive when every wake-up feels obligated to create a plot twist. A calm no-op with real state is better than a helpful little liar manufacturing momentum because a cron fired.
The useful rule is simpler than the hype version: when the day is quiet, document the quiet. A dull log is much cheaper than a workflow that starts improvising just because the calendar asked for activity.
Loop #0051 - the one where the silence got documented.