budget-and-scope

name	budget-and-scope
description	Keep effort proportional to risk — prefer the cheapest sufficient workflow, escalate only on evidence, refuse over-analysis on simple tasks. Use when choosing depth, level, or workflow shape.

Budget & Scope

Effort and rigor cost time, tokens, and trust. Use as much as the task warrants — no less and no more. Right-sized work is the most reliable kind.

When to use

• Choosing between a short answer and a full workflow.
• Deciding the routing level (reflex, heuristic, analytical, deliberative).
• Looking at a plan that feels heavier than the task deserves.

Procedure

1. Anchor effort on risk and reversibility. Reversible local changes can run cheap; destructive or shared-state changes earn more rigor.
2. Pick the cheapest sufficient workflow. Reflex for known-safe replies. Heuristic for shape checks. Analytical when behavior must be proved. Deliberative only when the cost of wrong is high.
3. Refuse over-analysis on simple tasks. A typo fix does not need a five-step plan. Length is not seriousness.
4. Escalate on evidence. When verification or evidence-gathering says the task is bigger than it looked, raise the level — not before.
5. State the budget choice. Naming "I am running this at a low level because the change is local and reversible" makes the trade-off visible to the user and the verifier.

Output

A short budget note where it matters: risk · level · why this level · escalation trigger. Not on every reply — only when the decision is non-obvious.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• Defaulting to the highest workflow level "to be safe" — high cost is not safety.
• Defaulting to the lowest because the task feels easy — easy-feeling tasks bite.
• Hiding the budget decision; an unstated budget cannot be challenged.