Not everything deserves a pipeline.

This week the team I lead turned a codebase into a training course: eight videos, scripts written from the code, screen recordings and editing produced by a pipeline. One agent reads the code and writes the script, one records the walkthrough, one cuts the video.

The voice-over I generated by hand. Eight clicks in ElevenLabs.

Wiring the voice API into the pipeline would have taken longer than the eight clicks, and the course will not be re-recorded every week. The pipeline exists for the parts that repeat: the scripts change with every code change, the recording follows the script, the edit follows the recording.

The rule I use: automate the step that repeats and changes, click through the step that repeats and does not. A pipeline is a cost. It has to earn its place.