ME.3:4.1 - Pattern-Use Unfolding

1. Bound the situation family. Name representative Work, receiving result, affected subjects, decision window, recurrence expected, important variants, and ordinary exclusions. Recover the subject of each project, process, or case claim under A.15.6; attach a criterion to the plan, Method, Work, result, or other subject it constrains. Several accounts concern one Work only when their claims support that reading.
2. State required contributions before candidates. Describe the reusable actions, results, or preserved conditions that one Method or named Method relations must contribute. Do not write a familiar candidate’s current procedure as the requirement unless that exact feature is independently non-negotiable.
3. Use source prompts without importing kinds. Ask what goal, procedure, rationale, framing, mindset, intended use, representation, tool, scope, and adaptation conditions a source makes visible. Place the answer with its actual subject. A stated mindset may be description content; an obtaining capability or cultural relation needs separate evidence.
4. Recover conditions around enactment. State performer capabilities, technical and organizational conditions, inputs, support/provider access, responsibility, covering Work assignments, permission and decision-authority relations, evidence timing, reversibility, and other Work or result constraints. Keep these conditions distinct from one another and from the performed Work and its decision result.
5. Separate variation from invariants. Name lawful branches, substitutions, timing ranges, and local adaptations. Mark non-negotiable result, safety, confidentiality, authority, or evidence conditions explicitly. If a criterion’s justification is the live question, use §4.4 to appraise it while retaining its current force. An already justified criterion needs no new appraisal.
6. Set burdens at the right level. Attach time, attention, capacity, delay, meeting, or cost limits to a participant, Work scope, and window. Keep individual burden distinguishable from combined peak demand and burden transferred to another participant or period.
7. Name evidence and observations. For every decision-changing criterion, state what record or observation a later evaluation needs, its edition or window when material, and what would count as satisfied, failed, or unknown. Do not turn the requested evidence into a fit verdict.
8. State acceptance, stop, and reopen rules. Say when the criteria set is adequate for its next use, which missing fact stops that route, and which situation or source change requires rebuilding it. A stop may route to capability, support, authority, product, or Work redesign rather than Method selection.
9. Return without selecting. Publish the criteria by subject and decision level. Send individual subject questions to ME.5 and combined structure questions to ME.6 only when their own entry conditions hold.