The plan must be editable by the user, not only approved or rejected

What it is

If a plan can only be approved or rejected as a whole, the person’s grain of control is the task: run all of it, or none. The one wrong step holds the whole hostage. Plans must be editable requires that a node can be dropped, an object swapped, order changed, a step pinned as must-stop, without sending the whole thing back to regenerate.

Rejecting the whole and describing it again in natural language throws away structure already seen.

Why it happens

Showing the plan before execute puts the future on the table; editable is what lets hands touch what is on the table. With only approve/reject, a person facing an eight-step plan with seven right and one wrong outward object rationally approves and hopes to stop in-process — correction slides back in-process. Editable keeps control of the decision stage in the decision stage. Grain still has to be reviewable; editable is not opening a script editor. It is a finite, intelligible surgery on nodes.

Reverse handoff must declare what the person changed; editing a plan before execute is an early form of the same duty: the edited plan is that declaration, and the system must run it.

Studying it

Give a plan with a single-step error, compare: approve/reject only, steps deletable, objects swappable, a freely editable script. Dependent variables: whether the wrong step is taken off before start, harm to correct steps, whether people give up editing and reject the whole. Independent variables: the set of edit operations, whether an edit immediately redisplays as a new plan.

Giving up editing to reject the whole means the surgical tools do not work, not that people do not want to edit.

Where it stops holding

When the system rewrites the plan after it starts, editable becomes re-approval of the change, not a silent extra cut. When abstraction is too fine, editable becomes editing a log. When the plan and the real path disagree, people are editing a script. A one-step task has no node to edit.

Applying it

• Plan nodes offer delete, swap object, mark “this step must stop.” Do not imply “you can change anything” in copy for operations you do not offer.
• An edit immediately redisplays the whole new plan; start binds to the new plan, not the first one.
• Check: seven steps right, one object wrong. People should edit only that step and start, not reject the whole. If most reject the whole, or approve and only stop in-process, editable is not yet control.

Related

• Same group: L4.14.1 Showing the plan before execution moves correction cost from after to before · L4.14.3 If the plan changes during execution, that change must be notified, or the prior approval no longer holds · L4.14.4 The plan's abstraction level must match the user's capacity to judge; a too-fine plan cannot be reviewed · L4.14.5 The plan the system shows must match the path it actually runs, or approval is empty
• Nearby: L2.12 Iterative Edits and Local Regeneration · L4.04 Takeover and Handoff Design · L4.01 Levels of Automation
• Search terms: plan editing · human revision · mixed-initiative