| Fewest steps wins | Deterministic realization, exploration, assurance, or recovery is deleted because it adds work. | Apply all three branches and compare substantive consequences, not step count. |
| Next-click horizon | A probe is judged useless because it changes a later decision rather than the next administrative action. | End the horizon at the nearest named substantive receiver and state the dependency. |
| Infinite downstream usefulness | Any requirement survives because it might help an unnamed future user. | Require a named receiver, decision, reliance, or recovery use; otherwise remove or demote it. |
| Administrative self-receiver | A receipt is justified because it updates the route state that exists only to carry the receipt. | Name a subject decision or reliance outside the requirement’s own administration. |
| Fabricated alternatives for deterministic work | A build or transformation step must invent outcome branches to look decision-relevant. | Retain it through selected realization when it performs the already selected result. |
| Precaution label as assurance | Calling a step “safety” or “compliance” creates an unsupported floor. | Name the direct authority, evidence, exposure, and relied-on condition; return their disposition to the direct owner. |
| Possible contribution as sufficient reason to require work | A probe is demanded because it could matter, despite unavailable means, excessive burden or a missed receiving window. | Establish contribution here; complete the live demand or choice question through C.11.DUA or C.11 and retain a useful current answer when acquisition is not selected. |
| Mandatory parsimony record | The screen creates the same ceremony it is meant to remove. | Use one ordinary disposition sentence unless a named later use needs a durable episteme. |
| Free-energy or physics laundering | Expected free energy, variational free energy, or Hamiltonian least action is presented as proof of a universal engineering rule. | Keep only the bounded epistemic, pragmatic, horizon, and risk distinctions; reject mathematical equivalence and mandated scalarization. |