probe-driven-design
Installation
SKILL.md
Probe-Driven Design
Navigate the fog of war by making consequential uncertainty concrete before designing around it.
Core principle: Make uncertainty observable before filling it with plausible detail.
Use the smallest useful probe: the least costly action that can ground the next design decision without simplifying away the thing being decided. Stop when that decision is grounded enough for its stakes and reversibility, or when another probe would cost more than it could change.
Vocabulary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Design decision | A consequential choice about what or how to build, organize, or operate. |
| Probe | A bounded action taken to obtain decision-relevant information. It may be a targeted inspection, query, interview, walkthrough, trial, simulation, enactment, or prototype. |
| Learning prototype | A temporary version or enactment of a candidate design used inside a probe. Not every probe uses one, and not every temporary probe artifact is a prototype. |
| Result | What the probe actually observed or gathered, with enough provenance and material limits to judge it. |
| Learning | A change in understanding supported by the result. Record it separately when the interpretation is non-obvious, consequential, or disputed. |
Result names what came back. Learning names what that result changes in the understanding of the problem. Never present an interpretation as though it were the result itself.