Foundation Sprint Founding Hypothesis

Day 2 end of a Foundation Sprint. The team compresses the full sprint output into a single canonical sentence plus a testable scorecard. This is the artifact the sprint exists to produce; everything before this skill was preparation. Without a ratifiable Founding Hypothesis, the sprint failed.

Family contract: docs/reference/skill-families/foundation-sprint-skills-contract.md. This skill is a member of foundation-sprint-skills.

When to Use

• Day 2 end of a Foundation Sprint.
• Magic Lenses is signed; top bet and backup are named.
• The team has 30-45 minutes left in Day 2 and the energy to write the sentence carefully.

When NOT to Use

• Magic Lenses did not produce a clear top bet. Return to Magic Lenses; the Founding Hypothesis cannot stabilize on an unstable top bet.
• The team wants to "polish the hypothesis later." The hypothesis must be ratified by end of Day 2 or the sprint output is incomplete. Polishing later means re-litigating; that defeats the sprint's purpose.
• The team wants to ratify a vague hypothesis to "ship the sprint." A vague hypothesis is worse than no hypothesis; it gives false confidence and burns trust when validation fails.