Method-guided action
Type: types/tag-readme.md
How an agent selects or acquires a method, brings it into use, and lets it guide decisions—including where that guidance ends. Assign this tag when a note substantively explains method selection, borrowing and transfer, activation, enforcement, or the choices a method settles or leaves open. Definitions and worked cases qualify when they explain one of these relations.
Guidance for borrowing conceptual frameworks qualifies when it supplies criteria for choosing or checking what to reuse in the receiving problem. Merely describing a framework, following a method, or containing instructions is insufficient. The defining note is actionable methodology: a methodology can guide action only relative to an operator, available operations, a target, and a setting.
A theory–method relationship qualifies when it explains how decisions move between following the method and reasoning beyond its coverage. Notes that also explain learning can carry learning-theory; the tags can overlap.
Selection and borrowing
- A capable agent needs methodology selection, not just relevant knowledge — a capable agent knows many individually relevant but mutually incompatible approaches, so task control requires choosing one
- Borrowing can operate through retained artifacts or weight activation — an external methodology becomes operative either by being retained in the system or by being activated in the model
- Weight-resident methodologies provide context-efficient behavioral compression — a compact cue activates a much larger methodology the weights already hold, at low context cost and with less inspectability
- Specification strategy should follow where understanding lives — choose among specification strategies according to when reliable understanding becomes available
Borrowing and transfer
- A borrowed pattern transfers only as far as source and target share a mechanism — transferred warrant reaches only the layer where the mechanism is shared; beyond that the borrowing is analogy
- Source-adoption policy — how Commonplace decides which borrowed ideas to adopt: a fast pass for programming patterns, target-side warrant for other sources
- Alexander's patterns connect to knowledge system design at multiple levels — a worked borrowing: pattern form to typed contracts, generative process to incremental codification, with the looser analogy marked
- Literature reuse can reverse a paper's hierarchy of contributions — select reusable distinctions by the cases that shaped them and their ability to discriminate cases in the receiving problem
Control and transfer
- Intent controls a local choice only when it distinguishes its live alternatives — a stated intent controls a choice only when it changes which live alternatives are admissible or preferred
- Problem matches guide method search; mechanism matches bound transfer — a problem match generates candidate source methods; a mechanism match is what bounds whether the method transfers
- Decorrelated reviewers still share the field's prior, so read their findings by the claim's stance — a review methodology's blind spot: reviewers converge on consensus where a claim is original, so findings are read by the claim's stance
- A fixed-model house must retain missing procedures for theory use — retain missing procedures outside fixed weights and ensure the system can invoke them
- A methodology governs its own extension only as far as it settles the meta-decisions it raises — a method governs its extension only where it supplies criteria for the decisions that extension raises
- Methodological and computational closure track different changes — distinguish what the method settles from who executes the decision
- Methodology enforcement is constraining — activation and response rules separately determine how a method governs execution
- Methodology with incomplete coverage and its live theory fallback form a two-layer execution system — coverage tests decide when to follow the method, when to reason from theory, and when verified handling can join the method
Related Tags
- context-engineering — where borrowing and weight-resident methods meet the context budget