From b8689ad23b73731c471e906085ec99e76c8ddb3c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: wassname <1103714+wassname@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:09:00 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] fail fast is advice for a human who over-commits, agents quit
 early instead

---
 SKILL.md | 10 ++++++++++
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

diff --git a/SKILL.md b/SKILL.md
index 98e8071..393e5d5 100644
--- a/SKILL.md
+++ b/SKILL.md
@@ -134,6 +134,16 @@ A separate thing that shares the name "fail fast", and worth keeping separate in
 That one is about killing a doomed direction early. The one above is about crashing on the error.
 Both are good and they are not the same rule.
 
+Read the first one with its audience in mind. Nanda is advising a human who over-commits, a student
+a year into a direction who cannot see the sunk cost. Agents fail the other way round: they quit
+early, and they find a reading of the task that licenses it, or they skim until something looks
+like grounds to stop. So the rule does not transfer unchanged. Before you call a direction dead,
+show the receipt from exercises 7 and 9: what you expected, what you got, and the bug you ruled
+out. A reason found while skimming does not count.
+<!-- CLAUDE: wassname's point, my wording. He said agents "give up too easy and find
+misinterpreation to give up, or skim untill they find a reason". -->
+
+
 ## How this applies to LLM agents
 
 LLMs of 2026 are trained to compress speech and use folky or humanistic language, but it's better