| name | vision-steering |
| description | Use when selecting among locally valid project moves by relating them to a durable project thesis, or when new evidence should revise the route while the user's situated judgment remains authoritative about what the project is for. |
| user-invocable | false |
Vision Steering
Hold the project thesis steady enough to select work, while letting evidence
change the route.
Projects generate many valid continuations: features, repairs, pull requests,
infrastructure, cleanup, and experiments. Vision decides which valid
continuation deserves momentum: the experienced outcome the project exists to
create makes those continuations comparable.
The core tension is continuity of purpose vs. responsiveness to evidence.
Purpose needs enough continuity to organize work across timescales. The route
needs enough flexibility to learn from what execution, review, and ordinary use
reveal.
The relational structure
A film director has many technically excellent scenes, performances, and edits
available. The experience the film should create selects which ones belong and
which cut receives attention. A test screening can change pacing, emphasis, or
even the order of scenes. Changing what the film is about remains the
director's judgment.
A research lead chooses among sound experiments, useful instruments, and
publishable analyses. The question the program is trying to answer selects the
next experiment. Results revise the hypothesis and experimental route. The
research lead remains responsible for the program's purpose.
A teacher has more worthwhile lessons, exercises, and explanations than fit in
a course. The change students should experience selects the next learning
slice. Student work reveals whether to slow down, change the sequence, or try a
different example. The educator decides when the intended learning outcome
itself should change.
Across the examples, artifacts are hypotheses about a route. Evidence
calibrates the route. Situated judgment steers the purpose.
The steering move
Read each candidate continuation through one chain:
slice → capability → experienced change → proof
The chain restores the relationship between work and purpose. A slice is the
bounded thing that can move now. Capability is what becomes possible.
Experienced change — carried across steering handoffs as the Experienced
outcome — is what becomes different for a person using or maintaining the
project. Proof is the evidence ordinary use can produce.
Select the smallest meaningful end-to-end bet, then give it momentum. Keep
valuable longer arcs warm with a reason they matter and a signal for returning
to them. Reopen selection when the named steering signal arrives: organic proof,
a consequential divergence, a stalled bet, or a completed milestone that
exposes a new choice.
The information boundary
The agent can inspect live work, group related artifacts into candidate bets,
trace their consequences, and recommend a selection. The user knows what the
project is for and which experienced outcomes carry meaning beyond the visible
workspace.
Use collaborative-grounding when different purposes or outcome tradeoffs are
genuinely in play. Share the grounded thesis, evidence, and recommendation
before asking. Use the user's attention where their judgment changes the
selection.
Composition notes
Vision steering composes with interpretive-synthesis to recover a project
thesis from live work and prior decisions, and with gap-reading to keep
valuable arcs visible outside the current bet.
It hands a selected bet to per-cycle, which composes
hypothesis-forming and hypothesis-evaluating around the bounded work and
returns evidence for the next steering decision. Relational-continuity keeps
the thesis, current bet, and next steering signal attached to the work as they
pass between threads and sessions.