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Use when several well-reasoned fixes on the same hypothesis have all failed, or when a symptom looks impossible.
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Basado en la clasificación ocupacional SOC
Use when about to show any prose a human will read - docs, README, commit bodies, UI copy, store text.
Use when building any mechanic that could fail on a machine out of reach - a shipped product, a CLI a user runs, a server.
Use when doing any work in a project that has the instincts plugin installed
Use when touching build scripts, release or packaging steps, publish flows, or CI config.
Use when about to build something someone proposed, especially when the proposer sounds confident and the idea sounds obviously fine.
Use when adding any cross-cutting change - a new gate, limit, permission check, or rule that must apply everywhere.
| name | question-the-premise |
| description | Use when several well-reasoned fixes on the same hypothesis have all failed, or when a symptom looks impossible. |
Working by hypothesis, test, confirm only helps inside the right frame. If two or three well-reasoned fixes all fail, the likely problem is your premise, not your next fix. Stop and ask: have I actually confirmed the bug is in the layer I'm attacking?
This sharpens superpowers' systematic-debugging: that skill runs the loop; this one says when to stop looping and suspect the frame itself.
Two or three fixes on the same hypothesis have all failed. A symptom that looks impossible — works in one path, fails in another that shares the same code. You're about to do a big rewrite or a deep dive to force the current theory to work.
After about two or three failed fixes, treat the premise as the suspect, not the code. Get an outside view from someone or something that sees the whole story and has no stake in your theory.
Chase the impossible-looking discrepancy. It points at the layer you're not looking at.
If your evidence for the premise is a missing log line, load logging-for-remote-diagnosis first: absence is not proof.
A test is flaky. You add a retry, still flaky. You add a sleep, still flaky. You mock the clock, still flaky. Three reasoned fixes, all failed.
The premise was wrong. Another test in the suite mutates a shared global, and the run order decides the outcome. Every timing fix was reading the wrong layer entirely.
The tell was right there the whole time: it passed alone but failed in the suite. That impossible-looking symptom was pointing at the real layer.
| Thought | Reality |
|---|---|
| "Just one more fix and it'll work" after 2–3 have failed | Suspect the premise instead. |
| "The data confirms my theory" | Data read inside a wrong frame confirms the frame. Check the layer. |
| "I'll just rewrite this module" | Before you've confirmed the bug is even in that module. |