Follow Procedure

Follow Procedure

If a decision has already been made and written down, reusing it beats re-litigating it. A named procedure is auditable and consistent; an ad-hoc choice is neither.

The move

1. Recognize the decision is procedural. Palette, commit format, deploy steps, error-response shape, naming, migration order, eval-gate thresholds — these are exactly the decisions someone has probably already written down.
2. Find the procedure. Search the repo: docs/, specs/, docs/adr/, docs/wiki/, AGENTS.md, .cursor/rules/, CLAUDE.md, memory/. Look for a name like "dataviz procedure", "deploy checklist", "ADR-002", "spec 0008".
3. Cite it by name. In your response: "Validating the chart palette per the dataviz procedure" — name + that you're following it. This makes the choice auditable and tells the user which document to override if they disagree.
4. Follow it. Don't silently deviate. If a step doesn't fit the current case, say which step and why you're diverging.
5. If no procedure exists, say so and either propose one (for repeat decisions) or just decide (for one-offs).

When to NOT improvise even though you "know better"

• The procedure is more conservative than you'd like. Following it preserves consistency; the right fix is to update the procedure, not skip it.
• The procedure is slightly out of date. Follow the spirit, note the staleness, propose an update.
• You're under time pressure. Procedures exist precisely to short-circuit re-deliberation under pressure.

Mark findings done in the tracker via a script

When a tracked item (a review finding, a task) is fixed, mark it done in the tracker via a script — load the JSON, find by id, set status + claimedBy + notes:

import json
d = json.load(open('config/work_queue.json', encoding='utf-8'))
for t in d['tasks']:
    if t.get('id') == 'REV-909':
        t['status'] = 'done'
        t['claimedBy'] = 'claude'
        t['notes'] = 'atomic temp+rename save; cross-process lock still open'
json.dump(d, open('config/work_queue.json', 'w', encoding='utf-8'), indent=2)

• status='done' — the finding is resolved.
• claimedBy — who resolved it (agent name).
• notes — record both the fix and the remaining gap (see document-non-action). A finding marked "done" with a documented remaining limitation is honest; "done" with a hidden gap is not.

The tracker is the source of truth for finding status; a fix that isn't recorded in the tracker is invisible to the next agent.

When it's fine to decide without a procedure

• Genuine one-off with no recurrence.
• Decision clearly below the bar where writing it down pays off.
• User explicitly overrides.

Anti-patterns

• Silent deviation. The worst outcome — you look like you followed the procedure but didn't, and the next contributor can't tell why.
• Re-deliberating every time. A procedure that's re-litigated on every use isn't a procedure.
• Citing a procedure you didn't actually read. Open it, confirm it says what you think, then cite.

Pair with

• match-conventions — conventions are the implicit version of procedures; procedures are the explicit version of conventions.