I had a maintenance step that was only supposed to restart my author lanes. It also shut off every publisher, even the ones I had left running on purpose. I told my AI to fix it so the step puts back only what was already on.
I run a Bitchwork system with two kinds of jobs.
Author jobs write the drafts. Publisher jobs send things out. Both run in the background on my Mac as LaunchAgents. A LaunchAgent is a small job your Mac starts and keeps running for you.
Sometimes I need to rearm just the author lanes. That is a small, boring maintenance step. I run activate-authors and the writers get fresh.
Here is the bug.
That step left every publisher stopped. Every time. No matter what.
If a publisher was running, it got shut off. If a publisher was already stopped, it stayed stopped. The script did not look first. It treated them all the same.
That is a quiet kind of bad. Nothing crashed. No error popped up. A step that was only about authors was cutting off live publishing that was supposed to keep running.
I do not want to find that out by noticing something did not go out.
So I handed the fix to my AI.
What I handed to AI
I gave it one clear job in the install script: before the author-only rearm, check which publishers were already running. After the rearm, turn back on exactly those publishers and nothing else.
Then I gave it two rules.
Publishers that were running before must be running after.
Publishers that were already stopped must stay stopped.
That second rule matters. I did not want a fix that swung the other way and switched everything on. A publisher I had stopped on purpose should not wake up because I touched the authors.
The receipts I can prove
I am keeping this honest. Here is what I have, and only that.
The fix is in
automation/genius-bitchwork/install-runtime.sh.There is a new test for it in
automation/genius-bitchwork/install-runtime.test.mjs.There is a note about it in
automation/genius-bitchwork/README.md.The work was done on 2026-09-25.
What the script does now:
It records which publisher LaunchAgents were active before the update.
It rearms the author lanes.
It restores only the publishers that were active before.
Publishers that were already stopped stay stopped.
Here is what I am not claiming.
I am not claiming this changes what the separate activate-publishers step does. That step is its own thing and I did not touch it in this story.
I am also not naming any brand's publisher as hurt by this bug. My receipts do not name one, so I will not guess.
This story is about the guardrail. It is not a win story with a big number.
Who this is for
This is for you if:
You have background jobs that run on a schedule.
You have a "restart just this part" step that you trust.
You have ever wondered if a small fix step touches more than it says.
You want AI to build the check and the test while you keep the final say.
Behind this paywall
Paid readers get:
The exact prompt I gave my AI to fix the bug.
The step-by-step of how the "remember, then restore" fix works.
A checklist you can copy for any "only restart part of it" script.
What my AI could not do for me.
What I still check by hand.
A short recap you can paste into your own notes.
The list of files that back up this story.
What paid subscribers get every week
Paid subscribers get more than this one fix. You also get:
Real work I handed to my AI inside my actual business.
The prompts I used, written so you can copy them.
The receipts that show what is proven and what is not.
The safety checks that keep AI from making a risky call alone.
Simple playbooks you can use in your own work.
Subscribe and the rest of this article opens right away. You get the full prompt, the steps, and the checklist now.
The full walkthrough is below the paywall.
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