Minimum Sufficient Design

Purpose

Judge whether a technical proposal carries the least evidence-backed complexity needed for its current scope.

Use risk as the scale, invariants as the floor, and feedback as calibration. Protect what cannot be traded, trade what can be traded, reject what lacks evidence, and recommend what fits now.

This skill is an engineering-judgment layer, not a delivery workflow, router, checklist, approval gate, or replacement for another skill. The active workflow owns the process. Project instructions, frozen contracts, and accepted decisions take precedence.

MVP defines what is in the current product scope. This skill judges the minimum guarantees required to support that scope; it does not redefine the MVP.

Build the Shared Problem Model

Before comparing approaches, retrieve only the evidence that can change the decision: