> end only a small % of the traces really are important to the final changes, because concise changes are typically very small and self contained.

yes, totally. i think this is mostly 1 piece of the broader puzzle. we found that, esp. for complex changes where i need to spend my brainpower anyways:

> A challenge then is can i understand just enough about a new proposed change to approve it?

whiteboard has been a powerful tool for us! i think much more of this needs to be instrumented as part of a larger system, as you said (we are thinking the same way btw: https://dev.fast/about/)