Triangulation Tests

Exact wording for Step 1 of the skill. Ask every applicable question in one AskUserQuestion call. Never ask the user to pick a Cynefin domain or a constraint type: people misclassify their own situation, so ask what they can observe and derive the domain yourself.

T1: “Who’s done this before?” (Keogh scale)

Option	Answer	Reads as
1	Everyone on the team knows how	Clear
2	Someone on our team, or we have access to expertise	Complicated
3	Someone outside our organisation has, but not us	Complex
4	Nobody has ever done this	Complex, near Chaotic
5	I cannot even tell what “this” is	Confused

T1 measures whether expertise exists. It says nothing about whether the outcome is predictable, so it must never decide alone.

T2: “Same inputs, same result?” (predictability)

Option	Answer	Reads as
Yes	Yes, reliably	Ordered (Clear or Complicated)
Probably not	Path-dependent, sensitive to context	Unordered (Complex)
No	No relationship between action and outcome	Chaotic

T3: “Can you take it apart?” (disassembly)

Option	Answer	Reads as
Yes	Independent pieces that reassemble identically	Complicated at most
No	Entangled: changing a part changes the whole	Complex at minimum
Some	Some parts yes, some parts no	Composite, so decompose (Step 1.5)

Q-Scale (skip when T2 is Chaotic)

Boulder: multi-step, ambiguous or architectural.
Pebble: a single file with an obvious implementation.
Not sure: treat as a boulder until decomposition says otherwise.

Q-Complicated sub (only when T1=2 and T2=ordered)

Evolving: the system is improving or growing capacity. Route to investigate.
Degraded: it was working and is now failing. Route to troubleshoot.
Both: improving on one dimension and degrading on another. Route to investigate with a troubleshoot sub-task.

Reading the answers

Agreement	Action
All 3 agree	Classify directly with high confidence.
2 of 3 agree	Classify by the majority and report the dissent: `🎯 [Domain] (2/3 tests agree)` then `⚠️ Liminal signal: T[N] suggests [adjacent domain]`.
T1=2 and T2 ordered, but T3 entangled	Treat as Liminal Complicated↔Complex rather than plain Complicated: expertise covers the parts, not the interactions. Route `probe` first, then re-frame.
All 3 disagree, or T3 is composite	The problem spans domains. Decompose in Step 1.5.

Misclassification traps

Expertise bias. An engineer answers T1=2 and T2=ordered while T3 is entangled. The honest reading is Complex, not Complicated, because the expertise covers the parts and not the interactions.
Overwhelm. A stressed team answers T2=chaotic when the situation is Complex with enabling constraints available. Slow down and decompose before routing to experiment.
Contradiction. “Nobody has done this” together with “the result is predictable” cannot both be true. The parts sit in different domains, so decompose.
Solution-shaped answers. If the user describes the problem as a missing technology (“we need Kafka”), restate it as a need before asking T1 to T3, or the tests measure the solution instead of the problem.