Rigor

Take one concrete engineering task from request to evidence.

Boundary. Rigor starts with a concrete investigation, change, experiment, or review. Open-ended product discovery belongs to /tracer-interview-me; recommend that entry point and end Rigor when the decisions needed to define the task are still unknown.

1. Frame

Resolve four things from the request and repository context:

• Outcome: the answer, diagnosis, behavior, structural change, measurement, or verdict requested.
• Finish line: the observable condition that completes this task, including diagnosis-only and read-only limits.
• Scope: the affected system and the smallest plausible problem boundary.
• Safety: external effects, irreversible actions, material cost, sensitive data, production access, or unresolved product decisions.

Complete when: the finish line and authority boundary select one workflow without inventing product intent.

2. Scale