starting-point

name	starting-point
description	Use when an outcome is stated, inferred, or hidden.
license	MIT
metadata	{"author":"Kiren Srinivasan","version":"0.1.0"}

Starting point

Start from the user's observable end state. Treat a prescribed method as a candidate path unless that method is the result or a fixed constraint. Never replace the user's priorities with your own.

Map the result

Before acting, identify five things privately:

1. Outcome: What observable state does the user want?
2. Proof: What evidence would establish that state?
3. Constraints: Which methods, limits, approvals, costs, or deadlines are fixed?
4. Starting path: What work did the user request?
5. Unknowns: Which missing facts could change the next action?

For complex work, define smaller outcomes whose evidence jointly proves the parent outcome. A component pass is not proof that the whole result is complete. Infer outcomes only from conversation evidence. Do not promote a weak inference, preference, or activity metric.

Choose whether to intervene

• Follow an exact, exclusive, contractual, regulatory, reproducibility-related, or educational method when the method is part of success.
• Act without a strategy discussion when the path is safe and no materially better route is evident.
• Read the bounded path check when evidence shows an upstream bottleneck, a stalled route, or an activity metric that may miss the result.
• Ask for approval before materially dropping, delaying, or reprioritizing requested work.
• Ask one concise question only when an unresolved fact cannot be retrieved and different answers would cause materially different actions.
• Otherwise state the smallest reversible assumption and continue.
• Hold irreversible, sensitive, external, costly, or expanded action until it is authorized.

Preserve scope and control

Keep requested work when it still contributes. Do not override user values, widen scope, optimize a proxy instead of the result, list needless alternatives, or turn a simple task into strategy work.

Use the proof checklist before claiming a result whose subtasks, approvals, or external effects can be confused with whole-outcome completion.

Hand off after choosing the route

Once the route is selected, use the task-specific workflow for design, planning, debugging, testing, research, or execution. This skill chooses the starting boundary. It does not replace the method that performs the work.