Simulated Work Detector

Simulated Work Detector

Review your agent fleet's recent output and flag simulated work -- things that generated documents, reports, or summaries but didn't actually close any loops or remove work from your plate.

When to trigger

• User says "simulated work check", "what's my fleet actually doing", "audit agent output", "work detector"
• Weekly scheduled run (recommended: Sunday evening before weekly planning)
• After any major agent fleet expansion or new automation setup

Phases

Phase 1 — Gather Agent Output

Collect recent agent activity from all sources (default: last 7 days):

1. the agent platform scheduled tasks — query store/the agent platform.db for completed scheduled task runs and their outputs
2. Mission Control tasks — check completed mission tasks and their results
3. Cron jobs — check recent cron output logs in /tmp/ or project log dirs
4. Git activity — PRs created by agents, commits from automated processes
5. Vault notes — any auto-generated notes, digests, or reports

Build an inventory: [Agent] | [Task] | [Output] | [Timestamp]

Phase 2 — Apply the Land/Leave Test

For each output, ask:

1. Did it close a loop? Did something get shipped, sent, merged, paid, or resolved? Or did it produce a document that sits unread?
2. Did it remove work from the human's plate? Is there less for the user to do now? Or do they still need to read, review, approve, or act on the output?
3. Was there a downstream consumer? Did the output go to a client, a system, another agent, or an external party? Or did it dead-end?
4. Was it read? If it produced a report/digest, was it actually consumed? (Check if vault notes were accessed, if Telegram messages were read/replied to)

Classify each as:

• REAL — closed a loop, removed work, had a downstream consumer
• SIMULATED — generated an artifact but didn't change anything
• UNCLEAR — can't determine without user input

Phase 3 — Calculate Waste Ratio

Total agent actions: N
Real work: X (Y%)
Simulated work: A (B%)
Unclear: C (D%)

Estimated compute/cost spent on simulated work: $Z

Phase 4 — Recommendations

For each SIMULATED item:

• Kill it — if nobody reads it, stop running it
• Restructure it — if the core task has value but the output format is wrong (e.g., change "generate report" to "send email to client with key findings")
• Redirect it — if the output is useful but going to the wrong place (e.g., writing to a vault note nobody checks vs posting to Slack)

Phase 5 — Report

## Simulated Work Audit — [DATE RANGE]

### Fleet Health
Real: X% | Simulated: Y% | Unclear: Z%
Est. wasted compute: $W

### Simulated Work Found
| Agent | Task | Output | Why It's Simulated | Recommendation |
|-------|------|--------|--------------------|----------------|
| ...   | ...  | ...    | ...                | Kill / Restructure / Redirect |

### Recommendations
1. [Top action to take]
2. [Second action]
3. [Third action]

### Healthy Automations (Keep)
- [Agent/task that's clearly delivering value]

Verification

• At least 2 data sources were checked
• Every agent output has a classification with reasoning
• Waste ratio is calculated
• Recommendations are specific ("kill the daily vault digest" not "review your automations")

Rules

• Don't count "meta-work" as real work. An agent that monitors other agents is only real if it leads to action.
• Triage reports and summaries that require human review to be useful are SIMULATED by default. The human is still doing the work.
• Be ruthless. The whole point is to catch things that feel productive but aren't.
• If the user pushes back on a classification, accept it. They know their workflow better.

Source

Nate's Newsletter, 2026-03-28 — "The open loop audit prompt that separates real delegation from simulated work" Framework: Applies the "land or leave" test at fleet scale to catch agents doing busywork.