C.38:4.1 - Follow the seven-step same-result sequence

1. Fix one result question. Name the sought result by its direct governed kind, the receiver and use, applicable configuration or situation, horizon, acceptance conditions, deciding System, authority boundary, and commitment the decision may make. If rows seek a System, performed service, capability, access relation, and episteme interchangeably, split the questions before comparing.
2. Recover available inputs and exact gaps. Use already-available subject and specialist results only where they fit the same question. Apply A.15.9 only when one bounded result from another practice is missing or needs qualification. That request or return is an input to a way, not the whole way and not the choice.
3. Construct at least two materially different complete ways. Use labels only as prompts. For each surviving way, describe the relevant proposed or already-available Agents, Work, Methods, Systems, values, provision or access relations, enabling branches, and conditions through which the same result could become available. Mark every decision-bearing premise as supported now, proposed, or unknown. Merge labels that resolve to the same decision-changing contents; split ways under one label when a content difference can change the choice. If no second way can be supported, return the missing-alternative or search gap rather than fabricating a peer. When the gap is an unexplained obtaining operation, use C.39 for a candidate explanation or the precise unresolved contribution. Its sufficient-one-way result does not complete this comparison.
4. Use one decision-changing parity basis. Ask the same bounded questions of every way: result and availability condition; performers, Work, Methods, and means; production, transfer, provision, access, custody, or ownership; fit, interfaces, integration, and configuration; evidence, uncertainty, and assurance; support, maintenance, change, exit, and recovery; capability consequences; resources; and consequences for affected Systems. Omit a group only when it cannot change this choice. Keep a decision-reversing unknown as a visible gap.
5. Restore comparability without forcing totality. Keep the result, receiving use, acceptance conditions, situation, configuration boundary, evidence horizon, and burden categories shared. Use ordinary comparison when the ordering is direct. Use A.19.CPM and A.19.SelectorMechanism only when evidence gates, partial orders, incomparability, abstention, or set-valued retention matter. Do not hide protected conditions inside an unexplained score.
6. Freeze and hand off a finite option set. Put only complete-enough whole ways into the current OptionSet, with gaps that the chooser can see. Then apply C.11 for local choice. Its result may choose one way or a retained tie-set, reject the current set, probe again, or reroute. C.38 does not choose by implication and does not gain the chooser’s authority.
7. Name the truthful continuation and reopen. For a retained way, identify the first unsupported realization branch or the direct pattern that now owns the question. Reopen only when a changed result identity, use, acceptance basis, candidate, specialist result, capability, interface, evidence item, burden, support condition, affected-System consequence, exit condition, or observation can change the comparison or choice.