Third time in the same conversation, it suggests change data capture.
You ruled that out an hour ago. The licence cost for the connector was more than the problem is worth, and you had that conversation with your finance partner in March. It is closed.
But you never wrote that down. So the suggestion keeps arriving, you keep skipping past it, and you have now spent three turns being offered something you decided against before the conversation started.
🔍 The reasoning exists only in your head
You did the work. You looked at the licence, weighed it against the pain of the current setup, and decided. That was a real evaluation and it took real time.
None of it is in the conversation. What is in the conversation is your question, which describes the problem you still have. From that, change data capture is a sensible answer. It will keep being a sensible answer until something says otherwise.
The gap here is different from the ones in the last few posts. Those were about information you did not think to include: your engine version, your row counts, who is on call. This is about a decision you already made. It feels less like missing context and more like something that should already be known, because to you it is settled.
There is a second version of this that costs more. You do mention it, but halfway down a long thread, in passing, while explaining something else. The large study of multi-turn conversations I have referred to before found what researchers call a lost-in-middle effect: models pay disproportionate attention to the first and last turns, and references back to middle turns fell below 20%.
So there is a real difference between saying it at the top and saying it in turn nine. The second one is not a substitute for the first.
📊 How this shows up at each level
The mechanism is the same for everyone. What changes is what you are rejecting and why it stays unwritten.
Beginner. You have not ruled much out yet, so this rarely costs you anything. When it does, the rejection is usually simple and easy to write down: tried it, did not work.
Intermediate. Your rejections are technical. Tested it, too slow. Tried the library, it does not handle our date format. These are straightforward to state and the only reason they go unstated is that it feels like admin.
Senior. Your rejections are frequently not technical at all. You cannot use that vendor because of a procurement dispute. You will not propose that migration because the last one damaged your credibility. The team tried it in 2023 and it went badly enough that raising it again would cost you something.
Those are the ones that stay in your head, and it is not because you forgot. Writing "we cannot use vendor X for political reasons" feels like putting something on the record. So the most decisive constraints on a senior's options are the ones least likely to be written down, by the person best placed to write them.
✅ Two lines at the top
Before the question, not after it:
Already ruled out: CDC (connector licence cost, decided March)
lakehouse migration (no capacity before Q3)
Three things make this work.
Give the reason, not just the name. "Ruled out CDC" invites it to come back in a different shape. "Ruled out CDC on licence cost" rules out the whole family of paid-connector answers, which is what you actually meant.
Put it above the question. Not because it reads better, but because the beginning of a conversation gets attended to and the middle does not.
Include the awkward ones. Especially the awkward ones. "Not proposing another migration this year for reasons that are not technical" is a real constraint and it will do more to shape a useful answer than anything about your stack.
⚖️ The objection worth taking seriously
The weak version is that this is basic prompt hygiene rather than an insight. Fair enough. Cheap things are often the ones nobody does.
The stronger objection is about what a list of rejections actually is. It is a record of decisions you made in the past, presented as facts about the present, and it goes stale without anyone noticing.
You ruled out that connector on licence cost in March. It is now August. The vendor changed their pricing in June. You ruled out the migration for lack of capacity, and then two people joined. You rejected a tool because nobody knew it, and your new hire used it for three years.
Carry the block forward and none of that surfaces. You will get carefully reasoned answers that route around obstacles which no longer exist, and they will be delivered with total confidence, because you supplied the obstacles yourself. That is worse than the original problem, because at least the repeated suggestion was visible. This failure is silent.
I do not think that is a reason to skip the block. It is a reason to date it. Write the month you decided next to each item, as in the example above. Then when you paste it in October and see "decided March," you have a prompt to ask whether it still holds.
And once a quarter, take the list and ask the opposite question: which of these would you decide differently today. Some of them will have expired. The list is only useful if it is a record of what is true, rather than a record of what you once concluded.
🎯 The takeaway
Two lines, above the question:
Already ruled out: [option] ([reason], [month])
[option] ([reason], [month])
1. Reasons, not just names. The reason rules out the family. The name only rules out the one.
2. At the top. The middle of a conversation gets less attention than the start.
3. Date them, and review them. A rejection from six months ago is a decision, not a fact, and some of them expire.
The suggestion kept coming back because nothing in the conversation said no. You said it in March, to somebody else, in a different room.
