know-your-unknowns
Know Your Unknowns
The map is not the territory — the gap between them is your unknowns. Output quality is now limited less by the model than by how well the prompt accounts for what the prompter doesn't know. Specificity cuts both ways: too much detail and the model rigidly follows instructions even when the territory says to change course; too little and it fills gaps with industry defaults that don't fit. Either way, unaccounted unknowns become rework. The cheapest place to find an unknown is before any code is written; the most expensive is after someone else inherits it.
This skill is a menu of techniques for converting unknowns into decisions. Each technique targets a specific quadrant of ignorance and ends by folding what it surfaced back into a better prompt, plan, or sign-off.