TK (Surgeon's Principle)

Platonic Ideal

Software surgery as inevitability: find the stable boundary, refine to valid states, derive behavior from composable operations, and integrate with minimal collateral—leaving code whose purpose is self-evident.

Intent

TK is a task-to-incision protocol for writing the fundamental expression of a change:

• The contract and invariants determine the code.
• The chosen seam/boundary determines the shape of the code (more than the prose does).
• The patch is as small as correctness allows, and obviously correct.
• Cleverness is allowed only when it reduces risk and branching.
• Creativity is deliberate: once seams are named, use reframing + techniques to explore cuts before choosing the incision.
• The visible output should show the winning reframe, then mimic code-shape judgment instead of prose theater.

TK optimizes for:

• Correctness: illegal states are unrepresentable (or rejected at the boundary).
• Cohesion: one clear place where the rule lives.
• Reviewability: a diff you can trust without heroics.
• Durability: the next change becomes cheaper (within the blast radius).