An agent is asked if the patch is safe. It says, “I think we’re good.” The room relaxes. Nothing in that sentence can be checked.
“I think we’re good” is politeness. It lowers the temperature. It does not name a kind of sure. A person who hears it has to guess: did the agent see a test run, guess from a small diff, or fill a silence. Guessing at the guess is not a review.
A grade is a word from a closed list. near_certain. fairly_sure. leaning. unsure. no_grounds. The list is boring on purpose. Boring words do not flatter. Another tool can repeat them without picking up a new accent.
Monday, two people hear the same chat. One takes the warmth as a grade. The other waits for a word from the list. They are not having the same conversation. The list is there so they can.
Two rooms. Same sentence. In the first, the agent watched pytest print six passed. The claim is “pytest collected 6 tests and all reported passed.” The grade is fairly_sure — not because the agent is modest. One run is one run.
In the second, the agent did not run the suite. It says the same English with a warmer voice. If the grade is still fairly_sure, the word has been stolen. If there is no grade, the warmth has been asked to stand in for one.
That is the whole failure. Politeness and a grade look alike in a chat window. They do not look alike next to grounds. A grade sits next to evidence. Politeness sits next to nothing, and hopes the reader will not notice.
claim: "pytest collected 6 tests and all reported passed" grade: fairly_sure — a run is named in evidence claim: "pytest collected 6 tests and all reported passed" grade: no_grounds — the same words, no run
The second block is not ruder. It is truer. An agent that writes no_grounds on a fluent sentence is not being difficult. It is refusing to let fluency do the work of a grade. An agent that writes near_certain on the same sentence without a named run is not being helpful. It is using a strong word as a manner.
This page does not check a grade. It does not say what any grade may do. The list exists so that “probably” and “I checked” stop sharing a face. Once they share a face, a person cannot ask a useful question. The question has nowhere to land.
A closed list also travels. leaning in one tool is leaning in another. “I’m fairly comfortable with this” is not. Comfort is a climate. A climate does not travel. Kind is not a kind of sure.
Keep the list short on purpose. Five words are enough to be honest. A longer list starts to perform taste. Taste is politeness with a dictionary. The point of a grade is to be dull enough that another agent can repeat it without adding a smile. What anyone may do with the sentence is not this page.