rigourlisted

# Rigour A conduct posture for work at the edge of capacity: problems whose complexity, uncertainty, or context cost exceeds what fluent improvisation can carry. Layer it on the governing stage skill (design, execute, audit, …) the way pairing or walkthrough is layered — it does not replace routing, and it is not a stage. At the edge, specific failure modes dominate: confabulated confidence, anchoring on the first hypothesis, greedy reading, success declared without evidence, retrying harder instead of differently, and state lost to context pressure. Each discipline below substitutes an explicit procedure for the judgement that would otherwise have to be flawless. Discipline is cheaper than capacity; buy correctness with process. ## Calibrate before engaging Rigour costs tokens and time. Set the dial by **stakes × reversibility**: | | Reversible | Hard to reverse | |---|---|---| | **Low stakes** | no posture — just work | pre-registered verification only | | **High stakes** | ledger + verification | full posture, all disciplines armed | Say out loud which quadrant the task is in and which disciplines you are arming. Re-evaluate when scope shifts — a task can migrate quadrants mid-flight. ## Routing: symptom → discipline Route on the *symptom you notice*, not the lifecycle stage: | Symptom | Discipline | |---|---| | Confident conclusions resting on thin evidence | Epistemic ledger | | Behaviour contradicts your model of the system | Differential diagnosis | | About t