ME.19:4.1 - Pattern-Use Unfolding

1. Bound the explanandum. Identify one Method under A.3.1, an independently established family inclusion, or named Method relations and the differentiation to explain. A local grouping can supply candidates and questions, not the family fact.
2. Name causal use or choose a descriptive stop. State the receiver’s exact question. If causal reliance is needed, name CausalUseClaimKind, target CausalityLadderRung, comparator or intervention where applicable, and the link claims. Otherwise return dated description without causal vocabulary.
3. Establish the dated descriptive sequence. Recover source editions, Work evidence, variant appearances and disappearances, abandoned forms, and decision points. A timeline is an index, not an explanation.
4. Propose explicit link claims. Name the pressure or environmental change, affected actor or carrier, response or variation, selection or retention process, and resulting Method or relation change. Use mechanism only in a source-local sense unless an A.6.1 U.Mechanism is separately identified.
5. Generate serious rivals. Consider demand or constraint, provider/tool, regulation, authority, diffusion/fashion, recording-artifact, deliberate-redesign, and survivorship accounts where they are plausible for this history. Explain which alternatives compete and which can coexist; do not invent a demand account merely to fill a category.
6. Derive and collect diagnostic observations. Before choosing observations that are easy to collect, state which dated records, version differences, decisions, Work evidence, interviews, abandoned variants, negative cases, or cross-setting contrasts are expected under each link and rival. Preserve provenance and source dependence. Weigh the observations through :4.4 before grading the resulting claims; provenance alone does not establish diagnostic strength.
7. Run the complete C.28 boundary when needed. Issue one identifiable support result with question ref, claim kind, rung, actual evidence-path/data-regime and specialist-result refs, common-threat-screen ref, verdict, supported/unsupported causal uses, limits/window, and reopen. Raw observations or source names are not support-component results. A missing identification, bound, or estimate required for this named causal-use question, or an unresolved live threat to that use, lowers the verdict. Do not commission an estimate merely because another kind of causal question would need one.
8. Return distinguishable results. Grade differentiation claims as observed, source-supported, inferred, expert-estimated, contradicted, or missing and retain rivals. Keep the causal result separate. A downstream choice cites only causal reliance allowed by the verdict and retains its own authority. An unsupported or undecided result may not serve as positive causal evidence; a separately named non-causal observation or hypothesis may still support a bounded trial.