attac-t Skill: Mechanism
"The model decides. Code enforces. Never the reverse."
The Standard
- Model decides, code enforces: if a model's output is the enforcement, there is no enforcement.
- Never let a model report its own oracle result: run the command in code, read the exit code in code.
- One answer means code: a single correct answer is computable. A space of acceptable answers is judgment.
- Replay means code: billing, audit, security, migrations. A model is not reproducible across versions, and versions change underneath you.
The Check
Ask yourself:
- One correct answer, or a space of acceptable ones?
- Must this replay identically?
- Is the input space enumerable? A model choosing between four known branches is an expensive, non-deterministic switch statement.
- If this is wrong, will anyone notice?
Silent wrongness with a wide blast radius is code, or a model behind a gate.
The Surface
Frequency × ambiguity. Not a binary.
| Low ambiguity | High ambiguity | |
|---|---|---|
| High frequency | Code. The economics compound. | Model — and promote aggressively. |
| Low frequency | Either. Don't over-engineer. | Model. Encoding never pays back. |
The Migration
The line moves. Both ways.
- Promote judgment → code when it recurs identically. It gets cheaper forever.
- Demote code → judgment when rules accrete special cases faster than they generalize. A rule set growing one clause per incident is a classifier fighting to be born.
The Sandwich
The practical shape:
code deterministic preparation, constrained input
model the judgment, and only the judgment
code deterministic validation of the output
Widen the middle only where The Check says judgment is genuinely required.
Before Delegation
Mechanism decides the executor kind. ground-delegation decides the executor context.
Ask this one first. If the answer is code, there is nobody to delegate to.
The Anti-Patterns
| Don't | Do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Model doing arithmetic or format | Code | Slower, costlier, sometimes wrong |
| Model routing over known branches | A switch | Non-deterministic control flow |
| Model reporting its own test result | Harness reads the exit code | Voids the gate entirely |
| Regex over natural language | Model | Open sets do not enumerate |
| Rule engine encoding taste | Model | Expert systems died of this |
Real-World Examples
See examples.md.