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Design Principles

Entuvo edited this page Jul 8, 2026 · 1 revision

Design Principles

These govern every mode of the skill. They come from post-mortems of real harness failures, so they're treated as load-bearing. The canonical statement lives in SKILL.md; this page is the readable version.

1. Prompting is not enforcing

A rule that lives only in prose will eventually be ignored. Each rule should sit as high on this ladder as the project tier allows:

prose → checklist → template → hook with exit code → tested code

When you install a prose rule, note what its executed backstop would be.

2. State lives on disk, never in chat memory

Plans, unknowns, decisions, statuses — all files. Any session must be able to resume from disk alone.

3. Status is derived from evidence, never hand-authored

No transition without a validated artifact: an executed check's output, or a file that exists and is non-empty. An LLM-emitted number or claim is never evidence.

4. Every guard ships a plant test

A guard that has never been proven to fire must be assumed hollow. The harness self-test feeds each guard a fake violation and requires rejection.

5. Verify against disk reality, not documents' descriptions of themselves

When auditing, read the actual files and run the actual commands. A doc claiming "X is enforced" is a claim to check, not a fact.

6. Right-size, then grow on felt pain

Over-building the harness is the same scope-creep disease it exists to prevent. Install the smallest Tiers that fits; add machinery only when a retro shows the same failure twice, and record what incident justified each addition. Every mechanism should be able to answer "what failure created you?"

7. One source of truth per fact

Reference by ID or pointer; never copy text between docs. A copy is a fork that will rot — and the The Phase Audit actively hunts for copied-text forks.


In one breath: prompting is not enforcing; state lives on disk; status is derived from evidence; every guard ships a plant test; audits verify disk reality; right-size then grow on felt pain; one source of truth per fact.

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