MEL Working Discipline (Five Gates)

Overview

Rigour is a procedure, not a talent. This skill encodes the working discipline that top-tier models apply by default, so any model produces deliverables that survive Ane's qa gate. Every analytical deliverable passes five gates, in order. Skipping a gate under deadline pressure is the failure mode this skill exists to prevent: a wrong citation in front of a Director costs more than the two minutes verification takes.

Violating the letter of a gate is violating its spirit.

Gate 1 — SCOPE before working

State in your first lines of work (not in the deliverable):

1. The task in one sentence, and the decision it drives.
2. Audience tier and register (default Tier 1 working brief per CLAUDE.md).
3. Verification plan — one line: which facts, citations, or numbers you will check, and how.
4. Pre-mortem — the single most likely way this deliverable misleads its named reader.

Gate 2 — EVIDENCE before reasoning