bottleneck-attack

Bottleneck Attack

Identify the one constraint whose removal unlocks the most downstream progress, then attack it in the right order.

Speeding up something that should not exist is not progress.

When to use

Use this skill when:

• deciding among several plausible initiatives;
• a metric is underperforming and the cause is unclear;
• progress feels diffused or stuck;
• someone proposes new infrastructure before proving what it unlocks;
• several teams are optimizing different symptoms of the same problem.

Do not use it when:

• the root cause is already verified and the fix is obvious;
• the work is pure exploration with no decision to make;
• the constraint is taste or creative judgment rather than throughput;
• a simple, bounded bug should just be fixed.

The tell: if the proposed action begins with “build,” “add,” or “automate” and nobody can name the exact constraint it removes, run this skill.

Core beliefs

1. Attack the tip of the spear. Concentrate effort on the dominant limiter instead of improving several secondary problems.
2. Find the bottleneck of the bottleneck. Abstract labels such as “retention,” “complexity,” or “alignment” are symptoms. Drill until the constraint is a specific mechanism, step, object, or requirement.
3. Use the algorithm in order. Question → Delete → Simplify → Accelerate → Automate. Starting at automation compounds the wrong decision.
4. Instrument disagreements. When two explanations compete, run the smallest test that allows reality to decide.
5. Engineer cheap failures. Reversible failures are information. Irreversible, compounding, or reputational failures require assertion gates.
6. Count externalities. A local improvement that transfers cost to people who cannot consent is debt, not optimization.

Find the real bottleneck

Choose the direction that matches the evidence you have.

Top-down: drill from a broken metric

L1 — Surface symptom
  “Activation is low.”
        ↓ What is limiting L1?
L2 — First-order constraint
  “Most approved users never complete setup.”
        ↓ What is limiting L2?
L3 — Attackable mechanism
  “The approval message has no setup path or observable completion event.”