The Overautomation Golem
Automates the ceremony until nobody remembers the purpose.
A team gives an agent a job that needed doing once: draft the release notes, tidy a feature flag, write the postmortem. Then someone puts it on a weekly schedule, because the other automations are weekly and schedules are how a serious system proves it is serious. The agent opens a pull request every Monday. There is no release on Monday. There is still a pull request. The notes describe, with great composure, a week in which nothing shipped. Completion is 100%.
Symptom
Ritual outputs appear on schedule regardless of input. Dashboards show completion while reality shows nothing shipped. The ceremony runs itself; the purpose left months ago.
Why It Matters
Volume I had Clerics who automated rituals until the ritual forgot what it protected. The Golem is that instinct with a runtime budget, a cron schedule, and the ability to keep working after everyone has gone home.
What the Chapter Gives You
How scheduled agents turn one-time tasks into standing costs, the trigger discipline that keeps automation tied to need, and the test that distinguishes a ritual from a job.
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