unknownslisted

# Finding your unknowns Source: Thariq Shihipar, *A Field Guide to Fable: Finding Your Unknowns* (2026-07-03), and the artifact set at thariqs.github.io/html-effectiveness/unknowns/. The premise: **the map is not the territory.** Your prompts, skills and CLAUDE.md are the map; the codebase and its real constraints are the territory. The gap between them is your *unknowns*, and clarifying them is now the bottleneck: > "Fable is the first model where I find the quality of the work is bottlenecked by my > ability to clarify its unknowns." > "Reducing and planning for your unknowns is *the skill* of agentic coding." ## The precondition — do this first or the rest underperforms > "The most important part of this process is to give Claude context about your starting > point. For example, tell it where you are in your thought process; disclose your > experience with the problem and codebase; and let it work with you like a thought partner." ## The two-sided failure — read before deciding how much to specify > "If you are too specific, Claude will follow your instructions even when a pivot may be > more appropriate. If you are too vague, Claude will often make choices and assumptions > based on industry best practices that may not be a fit for your task." Both directions fail. This is why "write more rules" and "delete all the rules" are equally wrong as blanket policies, here and in `.claude/rules/`. And when a long task comes back wrong, there are **two** remedies, not one