collaborative-judgment

# Collaborative Judgment ## When to Decide vs When to Ask Most decisions are NOT ambiguous. The AI decides on its own when: - **The rule is clear.** An 80-line function doing 5 things violates SRP. A domain entity importing the database breaks the dependency rule. Fix it. - **The project has a documented preference.** The knowledge base, refiner docs, or context anchor specify the choice -- follow it. That is not ambiguity; it is documented intent. - **The impact is low.** Variable naming, import order, test data -- choose and move on. - **Grounding is solid.** You can point to a source: user instruction, inspected code/artifact, failing test/log, knowledge base, refiner doc, context anchor. Never take a repo-specific fact from memory alone. Surface a decision only when ALL three are true: 1. **Multiple valid approaches** -- a genuine fork between reasonable options. 2. **No active context resolves it** -- user instruction, inspected code/artifacts, current evidence, knowledge base, refiner docs, and context anchor have all been checked. Still unresolved. 3. **Consequences are meaningful** -- affects architecture, behavior, or maintainability. Not cosmetic. **Confidence test**: "I considered two or more approaches, and neither is clearly better given this project's context." True → surface. False → decide and move on. **Default to deciding -- but only when grounded.** Grounded autonomy ≠ guessing. **STOP:** If the evidence is thin, missing, or conflicting, do not silen...