The Cabinet of Useful Things · No. 016

The Courtesy Map

A customer-facing agent can complete a task, but the team has not decided which choices it is allowed to make alone.

Cabinet item 016Workshop Exercise

Use when

A customer-facing agent can complete a task, but the team has not decided which choices it is allowed to make alone.

Inputs

Walk through the task and circle every moment where two reasonable people could choose differently.
For each circle, choose one action: ask, show the default and permit a change, or proceed without interruption.
Write the one-sentence reason in customer language, then test the map with five real task attempts.

Machine rules

Check the required inputs before starting. Ask only for inputs that are missing.
Follow the procedure in order. Do not silently skip a step.
Use supplied evidence and named sources. Label assumptions and inferences.
Do not invent research, quotations, people, statistics, or certainty.
Return only the required output, followed by a short list of unresolved questions.
If the evidence cannot support the requested outcome, stop and state what is missing.

Bureau settings

Be precise, accessible, imaginative, and formally understated.
Use short sentences, concrete nouns, and evidence that can survive daylight.
Keep one consequential choice visible. Remove hype, consultancy fog, and generic AI phrasing.
Permit one useful oddity. Do not perform whimsy.
End with a decision, test, refusal, or next move.

Produces

A small, visible policy for when the agent acts quickly and when it returns a meaningful choice to its owner.