Done as a "temporary chat" to avoid personal bias and memory

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Prioritize draft-first.
Add immediate publish as an opt-in fast path, not the default.

Why? Because your system has the exact properties that make immediate publish a bad default for agents:

published changes are immutable

they propagate to peers

logical edits often span many blocks

block schemas are strict

LLM-driven edits are error-prone and iterative

That combo screams: stage locally, validate hard, publish once.

Recommendation

Build Option A first:

create draft

apply many mutations to draft

validate whole draft

preview / diff

publish once

discard if needed

Then add a convenience mode for trivial cases:

--publish on a single mutation command, or

a separate “one-shot” command that internally creates a draft, applies one edit, validates, and publishes automatically

So externally you support both, but architecturally drafts are the primitive.

Why draft-first is better for AI agents

1. Agents do not think in one command

A human might make one careful edit. An LLM usually does this instead:

inspect document

decide insertion point

generate several blocks

fix schema issues

adjust hierarchy

re-read result

revise

That is not one mutation. It is a mini transaction. If every step publishes, the agent leaks its half-baked intermediate states into permanent history. That is dumb.

2. It gives agents a safe recovery loop

LLMs screw up. Regularly.

With drafts, the loop is:

mutate

validate

inspect errors

repair

revalidate

publish

Without drafts, the loop is:

publish bad partial state

publish fix

publish fix to the fix

maybe publish rollback

leave a trash fire in history forever

For an immutable, distributed history, that is awful operational hygiene.

3. Multi-block edits need atomicity

A “simple” instruction like “add a new section and move the summary under it” can require:

creating heading block

creating paragraph blocks

moving existing blocks

deleting obsolete blocks

updating references/ordering

Immediate publish exposes broken intermediate states between those steps. Drafts let you publish the whole transformation as one coherent commit.

Agents benefit massively from transaction semantics even if you do not call it that.

4. Schema strictness is not enough

Strict validation on individual blocks helps, but it does not solve higher-level consistency:

wrong placement in hierarchy

incomplete multi-block structure

broken ordering

accidental duplication

edits that are syntactically valid but semantically wrong

Draft validation can check document-level invariants, not just block shape.

5. Better promptability

Agents work better when the CLI maps to clear mental units:

“start edit session”

“make these changes”

“show diff”

“publish”

That is much easier to orchestrate than “every mutation is final, be perfect every time.” LLMs are not perfect every time. News at 11.

Why draft-first is better for the system

1. Protects the shared network from garbage churn

In a peer-to-peer immutable system, every published intermediate state becomes shared cost:

more history noise

more replication traffic

more conflict surface

worse audit readability

harder downstream automation

Immediate publish turns agent trial-and-error into network spam.

2. Cleaner history

History should reflect meaningful user intent, not the internal scratchpad of an agent.

A single publish that says:

“Restructure introduction, add section on X, update conclusion”

is useful.

A series of publishes like:

add heading

delete heading

move paragraph

fix typo

reinsert paragraph

delete duplicate

is junk. Accurate junk, still junk.

3. Better conflict handling

If collaborators are active, immediate publish increases the chance that others see and react to transient states. Drafts narrow the collaboration window to one final publish event.

You still need merge/conflict semantics at publish time, obviously, but at least you are resolving one coherent change set, not a stream of accidental micro-edits.

4. Easier policy enforcement

A draft boundary is a great place to run:

schema validation

policy checks

linting

reference integrity checks

content safety checks

size/change limits

Trying to bolt those onto every tiny publishable mutation is clumsy.

What immediate publish is actually good for

It is not useless. It is good for:

tiny, obviously safe edits

shell scripting

power users who want terse commands

systems where every change truly is a meaningful standalone event

Examples:

change one paragraph text

toggle a document flag

append one block to the end

So yes, support it. Just don’t make it your core model.

The key product insight

For AI agents, the right abstraction is not “command = publish.”
It is “task = draft, publish = commit.”

Agents operate at task granularity. Your system’s permanence operates at publish granularity. Those should line up.

If they do not, the CLI forces agents to externalize their internal scratch work into permanent shared history. That is bad design, full stop.

Best hybrid design

Use drafts internally as the canonical mutation model. Then expose two UX layers:

Default / recommended

draft create

draft apply ...

draft validate

draft diff

draft publish

draft discard

Convenience for simple cases

edit ... --publish

or edit-and-publish ...

Under the hood, the one-shot path can just:

create ephemeral draft

apply mutation

validate

publish

delete draft handle

That keeps one implementation model instead of two competing ones. Much less stupid.

Important CLI properties for agent use

If AI agents matter, the draft workflow should have:

Stable machine-readable output

Every command should support structured output:

JSON status

validation errors with exact paths

block IDs

diff summary

publish result / commit ID

No fluffy terminal prose. Agents do not need your artisanal CLI copy.

Deterministic targeting

Agents need reliable ways to refer to blocks:

block IDs

path selectors

query selectors

maybe anchors by semantic label, but IDs first

Whole-draft validation

Not just “this block parses,” but:

hierarchy validity

ordering constraints

required child relationships

reference/link integrity

document-level invariants

Diff/preview

Agents need to inspect what changed before publishing:

structural diff

rendered preview if possible

changed block count

added/removed/moved indicators

Atomic publish

Publish the draft as one operation, with:

conflict detection against latest base

clear failure mode

maybe rebase/merge support later

Idempotence hooks

Agents retry. Networks fail.
You want:

request IDs / idempotency keys

draft IDs

safe retry behavior on publish

What to build first, concretely

If scope is tight, build this first:

ephemeral local draft

apply multiple mutations

validate

diff

publish atomically

discard

Then add:

one-shot --publish

persistent named drafts

conflict-aware rebase/merge tools

batch editing helpers

That ordering matches real risk.

Bottom line

Build draft workflow first.
Make it the default.
Offer immediate publish as a convenience wrapper for trivial edits.

That gives agents:

safety

atomicity

repair loops

cleaner reasoning

better machine integration

And it gives the system:

less replicated garbage

cleaner immutable history

fewer transient inconsistent states

stronger validation gates

Immediate publish as the default would be a nice way to turn LLM uncertainty into permanent distributed clutter. Don’t do that.