One week of zero firing = mandatory redesign — change…
When a trigger has not fired successfully in one week despite being needed, redesign it immediately by changing at least one of: salience, timing, modality, or context specificity.
When This Fires
- When a trigger has produced zero successful activations for 7 consecutive days
- During weekly agent reviews (Review new agents weekly, established ones monthly…) when checking firing rates
- When you realize you "forgot about" an agent — its trigger died silently
- Complements When triggers fail to fire, increase signal strength… (signal amplification for weak triggers) with a more urgent intervention for completely dead triggers
Common Failure Mode
Giving dead triggers more time: "Maybe next week it'll work." It won't. The trigger's design is the problem, and time doesn't redesign triggers. A second week of hoping produces a second week of zero activations and moves the trigger further from consciousness. Immediate redesign is the only path to recovery.
The Protocol
(1) During weekly review, check: has each trigger produced at least one successful activation this week? (2) Any trigger with zero activations → immediate redesign. (3) Choose which dimension to change: Salience: make it louder, bigger, more visually prominent (When triggers fail to fire, increase signal strength…). Timing: shift to a different time when you're more receptive or the context is more supportive. Modality: switch from visual to auditory, or from digital to physical, or from internal to environmental. Context specificity: make the trigger more tightly bound to a context that actually occurs daily. (4) Deploy the redesigned trigger and track for another week. (5) If still zero → change a second dimension. Two-dimension redesign that still produces zero firings usually means the agent itself (not just the trigger) needs rethinking.