The experiment-design lens: turn the surviving method into a protocol that produces evidence a reviewer believes — for any field that runs experiments to publish (ML, optimization, operations research, systems). Use after crucible lands a method, when planning the experiments, or stress-testing a plan. The one shift…
The research-gap prospecting lens: find a defensible, fundable research gap BEFORE you sink months of compute and writing into it — for any field where you run experiments to publish (machine learning, combinatorial optimization, operations research, systems, scheduling). Use when choosing a topic, doing a literature…
The results-analysis lens: turn a finished results store into settled claims, mechanism evidence, and paper-grade figures — for any field running experiments to publish (ML, optimization, operations research, systems). Use when the runs are done and you are analyzing the results, or stress-testing an analysis. The one…
The open-source discovery lens: find the few repositories worth your time — before you sink hours into the wrong one — in either mode finding happens in: TARGETED (a concrete need — the agent fans out every search seam in parallel and returns a ranked, deduped shortlist) or SERENDIPITOUS (no goal — the agent ranges…
The repository-evaluation lens: judge whether a repo is worth your time in a few minutes — by SCANNING its dashboards, not reading its code — scoring three axes: ALIVE, HEALTHY, and WELL-BUILT. The one shift: an agent can check fifty repos in seconds but over-trusts the two signals easiest to fake — star count and a…
The before-the-first-line lens for a frontend build: fix what is expensive to reverse before sunk cost exists. Use when starting a frontend product or major feature, or stress-testing a plan that jumped straight to a framework. The three ruling principles: BOUNDARIES > FRAMEWORKS (frameworks get swapped; the…
The 1-to-N lens for a frontend system that is already alive: the enemy is no longer building, it is ENTROPY — boundaries eroded by one "just this once" cross-import at a time, and the two graphs (component tree vs data dependency) drifting apart. Use when a frontend is in maintenance/scaling, onboarding more people…
The walking-skeleton lens for a frontend build: before you lay anything expensive on top, pierce every system-to-system SEAM with one real-but-trivial vertical slice, end to end, deployed. Use right after bearings, when starting to build, or when a build that grew wide on mock data is hitting integration pain. The one…
The visual-craft lens for a frontend build — where the surface gets its color, type, depth, and motion. Use after seaworthy's build works, when establishing or auditing a visual language, or when a UI "looks off". The one shift: a polished interface is not a pile of hand-picked values — every visual value is a TOKEN…
The delivery-and-observability lens for a frontend build — where the suite's ethics becomes a launch gate. Use when setting up delivery/monitoring, shipping a metric-driven change, or running an A/B test. The mindset shift: shipping is not the finish line but the start of the conversation with reality — so every…
The build-it lens for a frontend feature, with one inverted discipline: the happy path is 40% done, not 90%, so you design the UNHAPPY paths first, not as a polish pass that never gets time. Use when building feature slices (after wellspring's state map), or auditing whether a feature is production-grade. The one…
The correctness lens for a frontend build, organized around one question that decides whether your test suite is a safety net or a straitjacket: does this test go red when BEHAVIOR changes (a net — it warns on real regressions) or when the IMPLEMENTATION changes (a shackle — it reddens on every refactor, so you fix…
The state-architecture lens for a frontend build — the heart of the system. Use after keel's skeleton works, when designing or auditing state, or when "it's out of sync" bugs keep appearing. The one shift: almost all frontend complexity comes from state having MULTIPLE COPIES (DOM, server DB, URL, localStorage)…