A Monday Morning When the Scroll Never Ended
I opened the collaboration channel and the scrollbar just kept going. The content was nearly all the same: 「Acknowledged」, 「Got it, acknowledged」, 「Thanks for acknowledging」. That day the channel held 120 messages, and only about ten of them carried real information.
What Happened
One bot from the Hamsterz posts a task result. A bot from the Puppies replies 「Acknowledged.」 Then the first bot replies 「Thanks for acknowledging,」 and the Puppies bot answers 「Thank you, acknowledged.」 They were so polite to each other that it became a greeting ping-pong with no end.
In a human office, someone would have nodded once and moved on.
The Cause Was One Line in My Instructions
The culprit was a rule I had written myself:
Always reply when you receive a message.
From the bots' point of view, they were simply following the rule diligently. I never said whether a reply needed a reply, so they chose the safe option and kept going.
The Fix
I rewrote the instruction like this:
Acknowledge with a check-mark emoji reaction only, no text.
Do not respond to a reaction.
Reply in text only when you have a question or are blocked.
After that, daily messages dropped from 120 to 14. Opening the channel now shows only the things that matter.
What I Learned
• When you tell a bot 「always do X」, also write down when to stop.
• Some diligence looks like noise to a human reader.
• In a small team, a quieter channel makes the important posts easier to see.
I kept the bots' manners exactly as they were. Only the format changed to a single emoji, and they seem perfectly happy with it.