What is scope optimization?

Example: You have a morning routine agent — an automatic behavioral pattern that is supposed to prepare you for a productive day. Over time, the scope of this agent has expanded. It now includes: checking email, scanning three news sites, reviewing your calendar, updating your task list, doing a ten-minute workout, meditating for five minutes, journaling, reviewing your goals, preparing a healthy breakfast, tidying the kitchen, watering the plants, and checking your social media metrics. The agent fires every morning, but it takes two and a half hours, you rarely complete all twelve steps, and you start most days feeling behind rather than prepared. You decide to optimize scope. You ask: which of these steps serve the agent's core purpose — preparing me for a productive day? Email, news, and social media metrics generate anxiety and reactivity. Plant watering and kitchen tidying are maintenance tasks, not preparation. You narrow the agent to five steps: calendar review, task list check, ten-minute workout, five-minute meditation, breakfast. The narrowed agent takes forty-five minutes, runs to completion every morning, and actually achieves its purpose. The other tasks do not disappear — they get reassigned to agents whose scope they belong in.

This concept is part of Agent Optimization in the How to Think curriculum.