Assumption Audit

Core rule

Every material assumption must become a verified fact, an explicit inference, or an unknown before it can support an irreversible decision.

Audit

List assumptions that could change correctness: path existence, provider behavior, version semantics, file format, permissions, network availability, user intent, current branch, generated state, and external service status.

For each:

• verify from the authoritative source when cheap;
• isolate it behind a runtime check when environment-dependent;
• provide a safe fallback when absence is expected;
• state it as unknown when it cannot be proved.

Prioritize assumptions by blast radius, not by convenience. A guessed path used in one log line matters less than a guessed path written into five provider configs.

Then route it

Naming an assumption is half the job; the other half is the cheapest thing that settles it. research-verification for an external or version-specific fact, visual-verification for anything about appearance, systematic-debugging for a failure, observability-first when nothing in the system can currently answer the question at all, capability-routing when the assumption is that you have to build something to find out.