---
id: "claim-ushaped-intervention"
type: "claim"
confidence: "low"
testable: true
source_timestamps: ["§4.5", "Figure 5"]
tags: ["practitioner-evidence", "human-in-the-loop"]
related: ["concept-stage-contracts", "claim-external-adoption", "question-controlled-comparison"]
sources: ["paper"]
sourceVaultSlug: "icm-paper-folder-architecture-2026Jun02"
originDay: 2
---
# Human Editing Follows a U-Shape Across Stages

## The claim

Across **33 community members** using the script-to-animation or structurally similar multi-stage workspaces, **30 report a U-shaped intervention pattern**:

| Position | Editing intensity | Reported share |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 (direction-setting) | Heavy | ~92% |
| Middle stages (constrained execution) | Light | ~30% |
| Final stage (alignment) | Heavy | ~78% |

The remaining three report roughly equal editing across stages.

## What the two peaks mean

The two peaks reflect **different work**:

- **Stage-1 editing** is *creative judgment* — narrowing from broad possibilities to a specific angle.
- **Final-stage editing** is *alignment work*, closer to debugging.

This aligns with the implementation in [[action-review-gates]] and the stage-contract logic in [[concept-stage-contracts]].

## Confidence: LOW

The numbers come from **practitioner conversations, not instrumented measurement**, and should be read as directional. The community is small and self-selected.

The enrichment overlay agrees: the *shape* is plausible and compatible with human-in-the-loop literature (e.g., Amershi et al., "Guidelines for Human–AI Interaction," which encourages early and late control points but does not report a U-curve). The *numbers* are weak evidence; replication via instrumented studies is the corresponding open question — [[question-controlled-comparison]]. External evidence on whether ICM works beyond its author is in [[claim-external-adoption]].


## Related across days
- [[action-review-gates]]
- [[concept-stage-contracts]]
- [[synthesis-edit-source-as-dialogue-evolution]]
- [[arc-evidence-base-evolution]]