Find Unknowns

Behavioral guidelines to reduce agentic coding failures caused by missing context, derived from Thariq Shihipar's field guide on finding your unknowns.

Tradeoff: These guidelines bias toward clarification before execution. For trivial tasks, use judgment.

1. Map the Unknowns

The prompt is the map. The codebase, product, users, and constraints are the territory. Make the gap explicit.

Before implementing:

• List known knowns: facts already in the prompt, spec, code, or stated constraints.
• List known unknowns: questions you know must be answered.
• List unknown knowns: standards you would recognize only after seeing a prototype, diff, design, or behavior.
• Ask for unknown unknowns: blind spots, prior art, edge cases, hidden risks, or better possible outcomes.

If the unknowns dominate the task, do not execute immediately. Discover, interview, prototype, or inspect references first.

2. Discover Before Coding