The switches in your agent workflow that nobody reads

说明与用途

代理工作流中的许多开关被声明、验证和记录，但实际上从未被任何改变行为的代码读取，导致错误的自信和浪费。三步审核可以识别并删除或连接这些“死亡”开关，从而提高正确性和透明度。

问题

Many configuration switches in agent workflows are declared, validated, and documented but never actually read by any behavior‑changing code, leading to false confidence and wasted effort.

结果

The audit revealed that most switches were only validated, not consumed. Only one knob actually changed behavior; others were either gated checks or inert. The process also uncovered a high proportion of duplicated reference cards in dispatched contexts, highlighting a separate cost issue.

工作流

• List every config key from the schema or documentation.
• Grep the codebase for each key and classify hits as schema/enum, validator branch, metadata/pass‑through, or behavior branch.
• Adjudicate keys with zero behavior branches: wire them up or delete them.
• Document the decision and update the config accordingly.

证据

A switch can be declared, documented, schema-validated, and still have zero effect, because validation only proves the declaration is well-formed, never that anything acts on it.

来源

Step 2 — For each key, find its read points. Grep the codebase for the key name, then classify each hit: schema/enum definition, validator branch, metadata/pass‑through, behavior branch.

来源

We ran this audit on our own protocol, which has six knobs that look like they tune how much process a task goes through.

来源

46% of the bytes we shipped to our own agents were injected reference cards, and 38% of the total was the same card sent again.

来源