Portfolios don't break because operators are bad. They break because the operating surface is fragmented, every product has its own tools, its own data home, its own update channel. The operator is the only thing pretending these are connected.
One operating mind is the alternative: the same brain reading every product, the same record holding every decision, the same agents acting across the line. The operator is no longer the only integration layer.
This isn't a metaphor. It's a constraint Qualia ships against. If a feature would force the operator to be the bridge between two parts of the system, the feature is wrong.