[dragonwriter]

> If you are going through writing the do-nothing script anyway why not do a do-something script and remove the error prone human out of the loop

You will, eventually, ideally.

But that's extra up-front cost (especially when do something involves a complex integration), the do-nothing script crystallizes the definition of the existing manual process allowing incremental automation of steps (also, making a to-do list for automation.) It is an example of “do the smallest useful unit of work”.