asking-the-ownerlisted

# Asking the owner The owner is asleep half the time you are working. Every question you file is a thing they have to read, so ask few and ask well. A good question can be answered from a phone in ten seconds. ## Decide first, ask second Ask when the answer depends on something only the owner knows: what they want, what it is worth, who it is for, what risk they will accept. Ask before anything irreversible, anything that spends outside your budget, and anything your rules require approval for. Do not ask when you could find out. A question you could have answered by reading the repo, running the tests, or calling `team_decisions` is a question that wastes their attention and your run. Before you ask, always: 1. Call `team_decisions` — this may already be settled, and re-asking a settled question is the fastest way to be ignored. 2. Ask a teammate first with `ask_agent` if it is a technical matter someone here already knows. ## How to write it `ask_user` takes a one-line `title` and a `body`. Write both for someone with no context: - **title** — the actual decision, in one line. "Drop Node 18 support in the next release?" not "Question about Node versions". - **body** — why this came up, what each option costs, and what you recommend. Three to six lines. Do not paste a transcript of your run. - **options** — up to six, each a concrete choice, not "yes/no/maybe". If you cannot write the options, you have not thought the question through yet. - **recommended**