decide-before-you-look
Installation
SKILL.md
Decide Before You Look
Thresholds move after the results arrive, and whoever moves them experiences it as having understood the problem better. That is not weakness to be resisted harder — it is what seeing an outcome does to someone who was hoping for a particular one. The only dependable remedy is to write the decision down while the answer is still unknown, somewhere that cannot be quietly revised.
The core is one short artifact. Everything else here is what it costs to skip it.
The call block
Six lines, written and committed before the run begins. It fits on half a page.
| # | Line | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The metric, with units | Fixes what will be read, so the reading cannot be swapped later |
| 2 | The predicted number | A point estimate. Being wrong is fine; being unfalsifiable is not |
| 3 | An 80% interval | Tighter than the band the decision turns on. Otherwise the run settles nothing |
| 4 | P(survives) | Your own odds, on the record. Calibration is unlearnable without them |
| 5 | The likeliest reason I am wrong | Names the failure you would otherwise meet as a surprise and explain away |
| 6 | The artifact already on hand that could answer this without running anything | The line that pays for the rest |