E.23.CAE:4.2 - Run the differential probe

1. Check the demand against the claim. Confirm that the current task belongs to the Work family and capability envelope being relied upon. Compare measures and qualification windows before calling a difference loss or transfer failure.
2. Recover the relevant configuration. Name actual or intended performers, roles, tools, records, interfaces, authority, environmental conditions, state, and other supports only where their direct rules apply. Use A.15.8 when one exact Work or WorkPlan configuration is current.
3. Hold development and updating fixed. During the contrast, avoid new teaching, rehearsal, procedure rewrite, fine-tuning, parameter update, recalibration, or other development where safe and feasible. If the probe necessarily changes the holder, mark the affected distinction unresolved or narrow the claim.
4. Return to a qualified reference condition. Recreate a previously successful or separately qualified condition without further development. Prefer an A → B → A or equivalent return when order, recency, or transition history can matter. Reappearance rejects simple global loss under those tested conditions; it does not establish general transfer.
5. Vary a decision-bearing condition. Change the smallest condition that can distinguish live rivals: an overt cue, cue reliability, preceding decision state or uncertainty, role, record, authority, tool, task or context identifier, state feedback, blocked versus interleaved order, transition frequency, or another domain-relevant condition. A label or visible setting is not assumed to be the effective context.
6. Observe applicability separately. Ask whether the relevant Method, response, routine, policy, or prior case is selected as applicable before judging execution. For a person this may involve recognition or choice; for an organization it may involve routing, role, record, or authorization; for AI or robotics it may involve task/context identification, policy routing, or function activation. These are different mechanisms occupying one observational position.
7. Separate availability, adaptation, enactment, and result. Where the case permits, observe whether the response can be accessed or activated, whether it can be transformed for the changed demand, whether the actual performer arrangement can enact it, and whether the required result obtains. A later failure does not by itself establish an earlier one.
8. Compare live rivals. Retain every explanation still compatible with the observations. Ordinary cue effects, interference, envelope mismatch, configuration loss, applicability failure, access or activation failure, adaptation failure, enactment failure, and actual holder change are not synonyms.
9. Return a disposition and candidate routes. State the earliest supported distinction, evidence and conditions, strongest surviving rival, unsupported overread, and patterns or domain Methods that could receive the result. Do not select a route merely because the probe produced a disposition.

These steps organize observations, not a universal cognitive pipeline. A holder may implement them through simultaneous, recurrent, distributed, or structurally different processes.