work-estimation

name	work-estimation
description	Estimate the necessary work before converting it into agent tokens, time, or money. Use when comparing implementation options, setting an agent budget, choosing estimate granularity or error tolerance, planning a discovery probe, or asking "how much work is this really?" / "预算怎么估？" / "工作量评估" / "误差容忍度". Do not use to invent a token price, approve spend, or replace strategic choice, execution, or calibration evidence.
argument-hint	[estimate | compare | review]

Work Estimation

Principle expression

Primary: P07 Supporting: P02, P08, P15

Scope

Own one judgment: given a concrete desired state and evidence, what is the smallest necessary work graph, what resolution can the present decision tolerate, and what remains discovery rather than committed work?

Work is executor-independent. It is not person-days, tokens, dollars, elapsed time, model capability, or a universal point scale. Conversion into resources, human approval of a hard envelope, runtime enforcement, and retrospective calibration belong to their respective owners.

Principle source

Use a host Sequence and matching interpretations when present. Otherwise use this package's read-only fallback in references/sequence.md. Read only P07, P02, P08, and P15 for this skill's stable lineage.

Start

Ground the work before assigning any size:

Current state and source evidence:
Target state / decision to change:
Actor and decision horizon:
Hard constraints and irreversible surface:
Current alternatives, dependencies, and unknowns:
Strongest case for using no estimate or a coarser estimate:

If the decision is one-step, reversible, and no later actor must compare or approve a resource commitment, use ordinary disciplined development. Do not manufacture a work graph.

Core method

1. Recover the concrete state transition. Read the object, its owners, existing evidence, and acceptance boundary. Separate observed work from a hoped-for implementation or an executor's claimed effort.
2. Construct the necessary work graph. Add a node only when it changes a required state, resolves a decision-changing unknown, verifies a hard constraint, or preserves a later settlement. State its dependency and acceptance observation. Do not use a fixed investigation/design/build/test sequence.
3. Separate committed work from discovery branches. A discovery node exists to decide whether later work is needed; it is not hidden contingency. Name the observation that opens or closes each branch and the smallest allocation needed to learn it.
4. Choose decision-derived resolution. Use resolution and tolerance. Estimate only as finely as needed for the current choice. If two alternatives remain indistinguishable within their tolerated uncertainty, route to a bounded discovery practice rather than inventing precision.
5. Return a Work Estimate, not a price. Use the record shape when approval, handoff, or a later comparison requires recovery. Name what an execution projection would need—executor profile, relevant observations, and confidence—but do not fabricate P50/P80/P95 or set a hard cap.
6. Route the next owner. Route resource conversion and hard enforcement to Work Cell/runtime policy; multi-alternative direction to strategic-advisory; post-run calibration to practice-cycle; carrier choice to form-guidance; durable placement to artifact-organization; and semantic insufficiency to principle-cultivation.

Boundaries

• Do not map a work node directly to a Work Cell, person-day, token count, or price. One executor may combine nodes; another may need several attempts.
• Do not hide uncertainty in an undifferentiated percentage buffer. Preserve discovery branches and their opening observations separately.
• Do not use forecast overlap to pretend alternatives are equal. If uncertainty can change the decision, identify the next information-gathering practice.
• Do not approve a Budget Envelope, release a child-cell allocation, or allow a forecast view to accept its own result.
• Do not turn the record into a mandatory plan or universal work-point taxonomy.

Completion standard

The estimate is ready when it names the concrete state transition, necessary nodes, discovery branches, dependencies, resolution/tolerance, omitted work, and a disconfirming observation. It is supported only when an action probe compares real alternatives without using tokens/person-days as work, a boundary probe declines a one-step request or unsupported point forecast, and a context probe reads the object and acceptance boundary rather than an executor price sheet.