burnishlisted

# Burnish Burnishing is polish by friction: press the tool against real metal until it gleams. It only works on substance -- friction against hollow plating wears straight through and shows the base underneath. That is this skill's physics, and why its beats run in order. The belief behind it: people impute the quality of the work from the quality of its surfaces -- "people DO judge a book by its cover" (Apple Marketing Philosophy, 1977). A repo is a product whose UI is its README, whose uptime is its maintenance signals, and whose marketing is proof. Humans decide in ~30 seconds whether it is serious. Agents decide from llms.txt and topics. Adopters decide from whether claims survive scrutiny. Burnish works the surfaces until all three read what is actually true. **The law, in order. Never invert it:** 1. Work that solves a real problem (substrate — not this skill's job) 2. Proof that it works (measure before you claim) 3. Packaging that transfers understanding in seconds 4. Telling people, with taste Promotion without proof is cargo cult. Proof without packaging is invisible. The failure mode of strong engineers is stopping at 1 and resenting that nobody arrives; the failure mode of marketers is starting at 4. Run the beats in order. ## Gate Confirm the situation is repo packaging, maintenance, or promotion. Route away: a single bug fix is just a fix; UI or product design is kiln's job; the voice of one standalone document is a writing task, not repo packaging. If th