The goal is to make a co-op partner a full second worker on the base. The client already does a lot — the job now is to bring what works up to the benchmark and make it properly robust, and to build what's missing.
I didn't invent the bar; the game set it. A kerfur already does exactly the set of jobs that keeps a base alive: fix servers, collect reports onto a floppy, fix transformers, carry things, patrol. That's the list.
And then the part no robot does — the workstation. Catching a signal, tuning it, downloading, decoding, processing it. That's the actual game. Most of it already works in co-op; the job there is making it solid rather than merely working.
I want all of it done by a second player with their own hands, and the result landing properly in the shared world — no worse than the robot, and better.
This is the goal, not a shipped feature.