Principles
House rules.
Six rules. Each blocks a familiar way of fooling yourself.
- 01
Unknown is not pass.
Missing evidence stays unknown.
If a monitor can’t read its source, it says unknown. If a case can’t be scored, it’s marked not comparable. A missing value shows up as missing. Being unsure is allowed. Faking a green light is not.
- 02
Claims are typed.
Green CI proves code, not economics.
Passing tests show the code does what the tests check. They don’t show the right version is running, or that anything earned money. Every public claim says what kind of claim it is.
- 03
Identity travels with evidence.
Every result traces back to exact code, config and inputs.
If you can’t trace a result back, you can’t check it. Accepted results carry the commit, the config digest, the input digest and the runtime generation that produced them. No identity, no acceptance.
- 04
Every activation is bounded.
Limits are set before scale, not after.
Before anything goes live, the limits are written down: how long, how much, when to stop and how to back out. Scale comes later, and only on evidence gathered inside those limits.
- 05
Failure should improve the substrate.
A failed engine should leave better tools behind.
Most ideas about market edge turn out to be wrong. That’s fine if being wrong is cheap and leaves something behind: a sharper replay harness, a new monitor check, a clearer picture of a provider.
- 06
The operator should not consume the founder’s life.
Low manual load is a design requirement.
An engine that needs rescuing every week isn’t autonomous. Healthy monitors stay quiet. Alerts fire once and report the recovery. Runbooks are exact. Constant babysitting is treated as a bug.