crucible-meta-governance

# Meta-governance — 6 decision-layer patterns > **Self-Evolving Skill**: If any pattern here misled decisions, update the section AND append to `references/evolution-log.md`. Don't defer. These patterns are meta-level — they're about the investigation itself, not its content. Invoke when a decision must be made: pivot vs persist, kill vs narrow, ship vs hold. --- ## 1. Physical-constraint-first pivot When brute force yields null, extract the **execution constraint** and redesign the hypothesis class to fit it. Don't iterate on a hypothesis that ignores reality. Session example: 17 directional-signal null campaigns → user pivoted: > "What's the best strategy for a highly random walk market?" > "I can only trade on a traditional MT5 broker that allows hedging positions." From this came the synthetic straddle (BUY_STOP + SELL_STOP pending orders, OCO). Constraint-driven design unlocked the strategy class. The math (diffusive displacement in random walks: `E[|ΔS|] > 0`) was always available; what was missing was honoring the execution venue. **Ask yourself**: - What execution venue is the user actually on? - What types of orders are possible? - What's the realistic slippage / commission / spread? - What position-sizing constraints apply? If the hypothesis doesn't survive these questions, pivot the hypothesis, not the statistics. --- ## 2. Incremental artifact promotion (/tmp → repo early) Move findings from `/tmp/` to the persistent repo (`audits/YYYY-MM-DD-slug/`) ...