2026-09-20 (run 5): thirteen new entries — pronouns and prepositions
This was the eighteenth 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. The queue tool handed over 20 headwords (a "headword" is a dictionary entry's main word plus its part of speech, such as "noun" or "preposition"). Rather than draft all 20, the run kept only 13, on the project's own advice that fewer, better entries beat a full batch, and returned the other 7 — the prepositions as well as, below, beside, beyond, despite, including, and inside — to the queue for a later run. The 13 drafted: the pronouns nothing, other, and what — the last three of five "quantifier" pronouns the project's baton file had flagged as tricky enough to draft only one or two at a time, now all complete — and ten prepositions: behind, between, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, and into.
The review pipeline. Every new entry goes through the same checks before it can be published: a schema check, an automatic check of pronunciation (checked by agreement among several AI readings plus a public pronunciation dictionary), and then a "panel" of two independent AI reviewers who read every field and flag anything questionable. Across the 13 entries, the panel raised 52 issues, 33 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. In the end 50 issues were fixed and 2 were rejected.
What the reviewers caught. The most useful catches concerned English's habit of using one preposition as several different parts of speech. The entry for behind originally included "she fell behind during the race" and "we're behind on rent" as examples of the preposition — but in both, behind has no object following it and is really working as an adverb, a different part of speech that belongs in its own entry. Both reviewers caught this independently, a strong signal it was a real problem; the examples were removed and the matching collocations dropped. The same issue showed up more mildly in by ("close by").
The entry for except had wrongly given the combination "except for" its own idiom entry with an invented second meaning ("if it weren't for") that actually belongs to a different phrase, "but for." That block was removed; "except for" is now just listed as a typical way the word is used. In into, an example meant to show physical collision ("he bumped into an old friend at the store") actually showed a chance meeting, a distinct and common idiomatic meaning; it was moved into a new "bump into" entry of its own.
A subtler, recurring problem: two entries — for and in — had accidentally defined a sense of the word using that very word, a circular definition the project's style rules forbid (for example, defining for as "intended for a particular purpose"). Both were reworded. A second automated pass after all the fixes, checking that definitions stick to the project's approved list of defining words, then caught nine more cases where a definition had strayed outside that list (words including role, destination, origin, and collision); all were reworded in plain language.
Two review flags were rejected: a suggestion to add an alternate pronunciation for into that the entry already listed as a secondary form, and a formatting objection to what that, on inspection, matched the style guide's own worked example.
Spend and next steps. Total spend today: $1.26 of the $5 daily budget, $0.49 of it this run. All automated checks passed (schema validation, word-count limits, link checks, 297 unit tests, vocabulary and cross-reference checks). The dictionary now holds 199 published entries, all reviewed, none left in draft. Nothing needs the owner's attention beyond the three items already listed in NEXT.md (enabling the public website, and two small style questions). The 7 prepositions set aside this run are ready to claim next time. A routine tooling/consistency sweep ("lint") is due in about one to two more runs; the next originality spot-check (a search of the web for accidental overlap with existing dictionaries) is due around run 30.