Thank you for the thought out reply :)
That last bit sounds especially like the Ruthless route character. The point of the hotel isn't perfection. It's about humanity. Humanity is full of imperfection. Allowing people to work fairly easy jobs to help travellers who are themselves lost gives them meaning. Automation would only serve to remove that sense of belonging.
Yes, you make a good argument, and I agree. 'Fixing' the kobolts problem is not reasonable / goes against the narrative of the Saint MC & hotel purpose. But I still think my fundamental argument is still valid, even if my example was bad. Let me try a better example. Why doesn't the main character create artifacts to protect the exploration team? Utility, search-aid, and defense / offense? Why doesnt the mc create tools to spy on / try to one-up Argos?(before his true nature is revealed.) This type of artifact creation would be reasonable for a kind main character, as it's motivated by wanting to protect them, and doesn't go against the purpose of the 'hotel'.
>why doesnt the mc make artifacts to protect the Asterion / the guests?
Asterion outright says if you try to sign a contract like that, the ink will just spill off of it. You could have the main character test to make sure Asterion isn't lying, but that goes against the major point of this which is to trust Asterion implicitly since no one up to that point has.
I don't remember the exact phrasing Asterion said, but I believe that it was something like that 'contracts that goes against the purpose of the realm (tormenting asterion) would rot like milk'? You are correct that it probably wouldn't work to make contracts that outright protect the minotaur, and I don't think the main character should ignore Asterions observations and try anyway. But the guests shouldnt have the same problem? If so, there should be no problem creating contracts that doesn't protect Asterion, only guests. And it's aknowledged several times in-game that the contracts are pretty exploitable. There's a contract that prevents Asterion from embarassing himself with nudity in front of the guests. (A contract im guessing uses a loophole to phrase it like a punishment, 'Asterion isnt allowed to have sex with guests', or something like that). Why doesn't the main character attempt to create / talk to asterion about an artifact to help protect the guests?