RMP.1:4.1 - Pattern-Use Unfolding

1. Fix the receiver and use. Name who needs an answer, the exact claim, model, corpus contribution, or explanation that could change, the action or later inquiry for which it may matter, and the owner of that later decision. Keep the proposed evidence use separate from permission, release, safety, policy, maintenance, or adoption authority.
2. Find what existing material can answer. Reuse an applicable source answer when one is available. Otherwise follow §4.3 from the question and accessible texts: locate relevant passages, recover their meaning and applicability, and show what they change in the answer. Compare alternatives when their differences could change that answer or the need for a study.
3. Try the source-answer stop. If the material resolves the receiving question within its intended scope, return the answer with the sources and limits needed to use it, and stop. Use the remaining steps when a research question survives.
4. Form the candidate episteme change. State what exact claim or corpus contribution could be retained, narrowed, rejected, qualified, or added. Name the phenomenon, unit, case, population or corpus, relevant relation or contrast, constraints, and smallest useful answer. A topic, task label, desired conclusion, or data-collection plan is not yet a research question.
5. Apply the four conditions independently. Establish unresolvedness, non-routine choice under genuine uncertainty, a systematic criticism-ready trace, and a bounded communicable episteme return. All four must pass. Record why the nearest plausible non-member does or does not fit.
6. Name the criticism demand, answer condition and work stops. Identify the error or rival that a useful answer must be able to expose, without choosing a design family. State what the evidence must establish for this use, which result would defeat or narrow the proposed claim, and what remains outside the inquiry. Separately state when the present work can finish with uncertainty, refusal or a missing-input return, for example because further inquiry lacks value or authority. Such a stop preserves any unmet answer condition.
7. Return one exact disposition.
   • return the already-sufficient source/result and stop;
   • return the adjacent non-research Work and its expected result to its direct owner;
   • return a research-boundary hold naming the unavailable source or owner result and retry condition; or
   • when every condition passes, return a ResearchQuestionBrief to RMP.2.
8. Preserve later authority. The brief says why an episteme change may matter. It does not choose the receiving action, select a design, authorize Work, or promise that the answer will support the desired decision.