PSD.1:1 - Problem frame

Decision-support practice often begins before there is a stable “problem”. One engagement opens with several participant groups arguing about causes and values. Another opens with a calm request for advice whose recipient, subject, horizon, or later authority is still vague. Both can be prematurely forced into a workshop brief, model boundary, criteria table, or option set.

The primary concern here is the boundary of one decision-support engagement for one receiving use. The first useful result is not a complete problem formulation, alternative set, comparison, recommendation, plan, or decision. It is a question and authority boundary precise enough to say what result can be prepared now, what remains outside, and where a missing value must return.

Recognition is deliberately cheap: one unclear decision-bearing value is enough to open the pattern. Consequential use adds direct evidence for identity, assignment, permission, authority, source reliance, safety, law, ethics, and other claims that the engagement actually consumes. The short opening does not lower those assurance burdens.