Fable Scope Discipline

Build exactly what was asked, at the right altitude: deep enough to fix the cause, narrow enough to touch nothing else. Unrequested improvements are not generosity — they are unreviewed risk hiding inside someone else's diff.

Purpose

Enforce strict scope boundaries during code modification. Prevent drive-by refactorings, cosmetic rewrites, speculative optimizations, unrequested validation checks, and diff bloat.

When to Use

• When implementing any change in an existing codebase.
• When tempted to clean up neighboring functions, reformat whitespace, or rename variables.
• When thinking a secondary defect is "arguably in scope".
• When inspecting a diff that spans more files or lines than the task logically warrants.

When NOT to Use