prototypinglisted

# Prototyping Answer one open question with code built to be deleted, and keep the answer. The enemy is the experiment that becomes the implementation because something real started calling it. The overcorrection is an experiment built so carefully that the question is still open when it is finished. ## When to use - A decision waits on running code: a state model, an algorithm, a data flow, or an integration nobody has tried. - The request says prototype, throwaway or proof of concept, or asks to try something before committing to it. - Not for a look or a layout to choose: `designing` renders directions side by side and owns that choice. - Not for a change already decided: `implementing-batch` builds it. - Not for a failure with an unproven cause: `debug` owns it. ## The loop 1. **Write the question down.** One sentence that ends in a question mark, plus the observation that would settle it each way; an experiment without both settles nothing. 2. **Sort logic from look.** A question about how logic, state or data behaves stays here; a question about what a surface looks like leaves for `designing`, which already builds rival directions. 3. **Build the least that answers it.** One command runs it, and what it prints or shows is the observation step 1 named, so the answer is read off the run and never inferred. 4. **Keep production out of reach.** Nothing on a production path imports it, it writes to no store production reads, and it carries no test and no abstraction, b