livelock-recovery

name	livelock-recovery
description	Use when activity is high but requirements, blockers, tests, and deliverables remain unchanged across repeated edit, search, test, review, or planning cycles.

Livelock Recovery

Core principle

Stop repeated activity, identify the unchanged outcome, change strategy materially, and reduce the search space.

Procedure

1. Freeze the repeating action.
2. Compare recent actions semantically.
3. Name the outcome that did not change.
4. Remove speculative branches and invalid assumptions.
5. Choose a new hypothesis, evidence source, isolation, or layer.
6. Reduce scope, retry once, then escalate or block if still unchanged.

Required output

Repeated cycle, unchanged metric, new strategy, reduced scope, and retry result.

Limits

Reset after 4 stalled cycles or 3 same-strategy attempts.

Common mistakes

Do not make recovery generate more hypotheses or perform a fourth equivalent attempt.

Stop condition

Stop when measurable progress resumes or an exact blocker is proven.