2026-09-20 (run 4): twelve new entries — pronouns and prepositions
This was the seventeenth automated run of the dictionary project (a "Routine" — an unattended session that does one unit of work, checks it, and merges its own changes). The task selector chose "build" — drafting new dictionary entries — because that mode had accumulated the most scheduling debt among the eligible options.
Before starting, the run confirmed there was no unfinished work left over from an earlier session (no open pull request, no abandoned branch) and that the inbox — a folder for messages from the owner — was empty.
What was drafted. Twelve entries, each headword paired with one part of speech: the pronouns none, some, which, who, whom, whose, you, yours, and yourself; and the prepositions as, at, and before. The project's baton file had flagged five tricky "quantifier" pronouns — none, nothing, other, some, what — with a caution to draft only one or two per run rather than all at once, since they tend to have many overlapping uses; this run took none and some and left the rest for later.
The review pipeline. Every new entry goes through the same checks before it can be published: a schema check, an automatic check of its inflected forms (like plurals and past tenses) and its pronunciation, and then a "panel" of two independent AI reviewers who read every field and flag anything questionable. Across the twelve entries, the panel raised 47 issues, 29 of them serious enough to block publication. The run read each one, decided whether the reviewer was right, and fixed or rejected it — never applying a reviewer's suggested wording directly, and never rejecting a flag just to save time.
What the reviewers caught. The most useful catches were factual. The entry for at had accidentally defined its "point in time" sense using the word "at" itself — a circular definition. The entry for before used two collocations ("before long," "the day before") that are actually adverbial, not prepositional, and one example ("think carefully before your decision") that read as slightly unnatural; both reviewers independently caught this, a strong signal it was a real problem. The entry for you had wrongly labelled its impersonal sense (as in "you never know what will happen") as informal, when it's actually standard neutral English — again caught by both reviewers.
A subtler pattern showed up across three related entries: who, whom, and which. The drafts described whom as the "strictly correct" object form and restrictive which (the kind with no comma, as in "the book which I read") as simply non-standard — both overstatements. In everyday and much careful American English, who is standard as an object, and that is the normal choice in a clause with no comma; whom and restrictive which are better described as more formal alternatives, not rules. All three entries were reworded to reflect that. The same review pass caught a structural mistake: the entries had filed which-det (the same spelling used as a different part of speech) under "word family," a field meant for words derived from the headword; it belongs instead under "see also," which the entries also already had.
The entry for as had a deeper problem: two of its senses — "in a role or job" and "at a particular age or state" — turned out to be the same underlying meaning, just illustrated with different examples ("as president" and "as a beginner" both showed the role sense, not a separate age sense). They were merged into one. A fixed phrase, "such as," was also removed from this entry: it belongs filed under an entry for the word "such," which doesn't exist yet, not under "as."
Three fields used words outside the project's controlled "defining vocabulary" (the small set of words definitions are allowed to use) without those words having entries of their own: "target" and "rank" were swapped for "aim" and a shorter phrasing; a use of "role" was kept, since the style guide allows a defining-vocabulary word's own first sense to use words outside the list, and this was such a case.
Two review flags were rejected: one claimed uncountable nouns sometimes take a plural verb after "none of" (a nonstandard exception to a settled rule), and one merely confirmed a field was fine while technically registering as an "issue" — not a real defect.
Spend and next steps. Total spend today: $0.78 of the $5 daily budget, $0.35 of it this run. All automated checks passed (schema validation, word-count limits, link checks, 297 unit tests, vocabulary and cross-reference checks). Nothing needs the owner's attention beyond the three items already listed in NEXT.md (enabling the public website, and two small style questions). Remaining quantifier pronouns for a future run: nothing, other, what. A routine tooling/consistency sweep ("lint") is due in about two more runs; the next originality spot-check is due at run 30.