Principles

What a designer should believe

Patterns document how products solve problems; principles state what to believe about solving them. No principle publishes on aggregate evidence alone — it must hold in at least three distinct contexts from two independent vendors, and its boundaries must be mapped. A principle with no known limits is either trivial or untested.

Validated

“Make trust scopes visible and editable.”

Trust granted invisibly is trust that cannot be revoked deliberately. When what an agent may do — and what it remembers — is a first-class object the human can …

4 evidence · 1 boundary condition

“Prefer reversibility to permission.”

Every permission gate spends human attention; reversibility spends none until something goes wrong. Where actions can be made cheap to undo — checkpoints, sandb…

4 evidence · 1 boundary condition

“Show intent before action.”

Humans review the shape of work far better than they review individual operations. An agent that externalizes what it is about to do — a plan, a preview, a narr…

4 evidence · 1 boundary condition