principle-attack-the-premise

# Attack the Premise When two or more fixes that share one premise have failed the same gate, suspect the premise, not the fixes. **Why:** Each failure under a shared premise is evidence about the premise. **Pattern:** - **Write the premise down.** The premise is the one sentence that every failed fix assumed. - **Take a census before the next fix.** Count the imbalance per actor. The census shows which actors hold the imbalance, not how large it is. Write the census as a rerunnable script per [Build the Lever](../principle-build-the-lever/SKILL.md). - **Read the skew.** If the same few actors hold most of the imbalance on every run, something assigns them that role. Find what assigns the role. That assignment is the next "why" per [Fix Root Causes](../principle-fix-root-causes/SKILL.md). - **Remove the asymmetry instead of compensating for it**, per the [Laziness Protocol](../principle-laziness-protocol/SKILL.md). Rotate the role between actors, randomize the assignment, or move the role, so that no actor holds it on every run. A return path, a shared pool, a batched hand-off, or a periodic rebalance leaves the assignment in place and adds work on every run. - **When the premise is not about actors**, the census becomes a rerunnable check whose result would differ if the premise were false. Two timeout increases assume requests reach the intended destination; log the actual destination before the third. **Stop:** - Do not start the next fix before the premise is written down and the census exists. - If the census is even across actors, the premise is not the cause. Look for the cause elsewhere and keep the census as evidence. This principle is distinct from [Redesign from First Principles](../principle-redesign-from-first-principles/SKILL.md), which rebuilds a design around a new requirement. It questions a fact the current design assumes.