Guidance is no guarantee

An agent does not do what is expected of it. It does what is inspected.

Guidance is not enforcement. It is a mechanism that is read, and whether it was followed stays unknown until something checks.

Mechanisms sort into two kinds. Mechanisms that execute run against the work and return a result the work depends on, and they are checks, hooks, and gates. Mechanisms that are read enter the context and inform what happens next, and they are instruction files, rules, and prompts.

A rule stating the worst a change is permitted to reach is a different mechanism, declared and then enforced, governed by Set and enforce boundaries.

Anything that must be true belongs in the first kind. A requirement carried only by a mechanism that is read has nothing behind it, and the fix is to move it into one that executes.

The second kind gets spot-checked. A spot-check reads a sample of the work against a sample of the written rules, and nothing more. Inspection of everything is unavailable to a builder who is not reading the work. Sampling is honest under that constraint.

Treating a written rule as a guarantee is a violation. Writing rules is not. A written rule that nothing has sampled is a rule treated as a guarantee.

Inspection

Pick five of the rules we have written for you at random, and show me with evidence whether the most recent change that should have followed each one did.

Held this, or broke it? Say which principle and what happened — tell me at /contact, subject Principles. What moves a band is somebody else's experience, and I'll publish what moved and who moved it.