Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Ask 'why do these experts disagree' not 'who is right'…
When experts disagree, ask 'why do they disagree' rather than 'who is right' to identify structural sources like different methodologies, populations, or outcome measures.
Diagnose before redesigning — identify whether trigger…
When an agent fails, diagnose which component broke—trigger (never activated), condition (activated but context wasn't right), or action (executed but too vague/complex)—before attempting any redesign.
Classify errors as execution, knowledge, or judgment…
For each detected error in a system, explicitly classify whether it represents an execution failure (wrong doing), knowledge failure (missing information), or judgment failure (incorrect assessment) before designing any correction.
When error budget is exhausted, analyze the pattern…
When error budget exhaustion occurs in a tracked system, conduct root cause analysis of the pattern rather than investigating individual deviations, because budget exhaustion signals structural problems while individual errors within budget represent normal variance.
A true root cause, eliminated, makes the error impossible…
Test root cause validity by asking whether eliminating the identified cause would make the error impossible rather than merely less frequent—if only frequency decreases, continue deeper analysis.
When 'why' has multiple independent answers, branch…
When asking 'why' produces multiple independent answers, branch the Five Whys analysis to follow each causal path separately rather than selecting one primary cause, because multi-causal problems require tree structures not chains.
Stop Five Whys at structural preventability…
Stop Five Whys analysis when you reach a cause you can structurally prevent, not at a predetermined question count—use five iterations as a heuristic but let actionability determine the stopping point.
Inconsistent outputs despite consistent effort = missing…
When a workflow produces inconsistent outputs despite consistent effort, diagnose missing or unstable input-output specifications before attempting to fix the process itself.