Why
Recover rationale without inventing intent.
- State the exact decision whose rationale matters.
- Discover available evidence sources. Prefer source history, code review/PRs, issues, design docs, chat, observability, and analytics in roughly that order of directness for the claim at hand.
- If
search/connected systems anddelegateexist, query independent evidence categories in parallel. Otherwise search sequentially. - Separate contemporaneous evidence from later interpretation. A current comment is not proof of an old motive.
- Triangulate at least two sources for strong intent claims when possible.
- Return: decision, strongest evidence, inferred rationale, alternatives considered if evidenced, what changed since, and unresolved uncertainty.