Safe-to-fail experiment in Complex domain. Cause-effect only visible in retrospect — probe to sense patterns, not to prove.

Probing: $ARGUMENTS

Check for handoff context: if $ARGUMENTS references a probe-to-probe-llm.md file, load it before Phase 1 — carried context accelerates qualification.

⚠️ AskUserQuestion Guard

CRITICAL: After EVERY AskUserQuestion call, check if answers are empty/blank. Known harness bug: outside Plan Mode, AskUserQuestion silently returns empty answers without showing UI.

If answers are empty: DO NOT proceed with assumptions. Instead:

1. Output: “⚠️ Questions didn’t display (known harness bug outside Plan Mode).”
2. Present the options as a numbered text list and ask user to reply with their choice number.
3. WAIT for user reply before continuing.

Phase 1: Qualify (foreground — MANDATORY)

ENTRY GATE: Phase 2 does not start until Phase 1 is complete. No bypass path exists.

1.1 Parse hypothesis

Extract from $ARGUMENTS or handoff context:

• Hypothesis statement (what you believe might be true)
• Enabling constraints already known (carry forward from prior cycles — do NOT rediscover)
• Confirm/refute criteria already defined (carry forward, update if refined)

If no hypothesis present: AskUserQuestion — ask user to state the hypothesis. Do not proceed without one.

1.2 Identify enabling constraints

Bounds without prescribing path:

• Scope: time, access, reversibility boundary
• Immutable: production systems, data integrity, user-facing state
• Variable: what can be freely changed within experiment

Carry forward from prior cycles unchanged unless explicitly updated.

1.3 Define confirm/refute criteria

Before running: define observable signals. For each criterion:

• Confirmed: observable evidence that supports the hypothesis
• Refuted: observable evidence that contradicts the hypothesis
• Surprise: unexpected result that suggests a different hypothesis

Criteria must be defined before Phase 2 executes. Gate on this.

1.4 Present probe plan

Output:

🔬 Probe → [constraints] → [steps] → [expected patterns] → [confirm/refute criteria] → GATE

Probe type (see references/reference.md): architecture | library | prompt | integration | design

1.5 Entry gate

AskUserQuestion — one call:

• “Proceed with probe? [Yes / Revise hypothesis / Revise criteria / Abort]”

On confirm: Phase 2 executes. On anything else: loop back to 1.1–1.4.

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Phase 2: Execute (background)

Configuration: isolation: worktree + run_in_background: true

Runs only after Phase 1 entry gate passes.

2.1 Execute probe steps

Run the experiment as defined in Phase 1. Prefer minimal, reversible actions. Gate frequency is SPARSE — enabling constraints bound the agent, not human micromanagement.

2.2 Sense patterns

Observe results against confirm/refute criteria:

• What signal emerged?
• What was unexpected?
• What constraints were discovered during execution?

2.3 Persist Thinking Artifact ⚠️ MANDATORY

MUST execute before exit gate. DO NOT skip. DO NOT wait for user to ask.

Write probe result to a thinking artifact file in your configured workspace (e.g., thinking/probes/{project}/{date}-{slug}-llm.md).

{project} = current project folder name. Create the directory if missing.

Collision handling: If filename exists, append sequence: {date}-{slug}-2-llm.md, {date}-{slug}-3-llm.md, etc. First write gets clean name.

thinking/probes/{project}/{date}-{slug}-llm.md
thinking/probes/{project}/{date}-{slug}-2-llm.md

Guard: If workspace root is not configured, warn user and skip artifact persistence.

Content: hypothesis + enabling constraints + steps taken + observations + sensed patterns + result classification.

2.4 Exit gate

Classify result: confirmed | refuted | partial | surprise

Produce B4-compatible handoff:

Result	When	Transition	Template
confirmed	Hypothesis holds	Complex → Complicated	references/probe-to-investigate-llm.md
partial (enough signal)	Some evidence, ready for expert analysis	Complex → Complicated	references/probe-to-investigate-llm.md
partial (need another angle)	Some evidence, hypothesis needs sharpening	Complex → Complex (re-probe)	references/probe-to-probe-llm.md
refuted / surprise	Hypothesis failed or unexpected result	Complex → Complex (brainstorm)	references/probe-to-brainstorm-llm.md

Handoff token budget: target 300 tokens inline, flex 200-500, hard cap 600. References to thinking files do not count toward cap.

Self-transition: if result is partial and hypothesis can be sharpened, re-invoke probe via references/probe-to-probe-llm.md with accumulated context. Prior cycles compressed to 200 tokens at 800-token accumulated cap.

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Philosophy

• Probe to sense patterns, not to prove: one successful probe is a weak signal, not a decision.
• Keep every probe safe to fail: time-boxed, reversible and isolated from production state.
• Define what confirms, refutes and surprises before running anything, so results cannot be bent to fit the hypothesis.
• Change the hypothesis after a refutation instead of repeating the same experiment.

When to Use

• The problem space is in the Cynefin Complex domain: cause-and-effect relationships are only visible in retrospect, not in advance.
• You have a falsifiable hypothesis but no reliable way to reason your way to a conclusion — experimentation is the only path forward.
• The cost of a failed experiment is low and bounded: time-boxed, reversible, and isolated from production state.
• You are entering unknown territory — a new architecture, library, integration pattern, or service boundary where prior knowledge does not transfer.
• A previous probe returned partial or surprise and you need to sharpen the hypothesis before escalating to expert analysis.

When Not to Use

• The problem has a known solution or a clear best practice — use investigate instead (Complicated domain, cause-effect knowable by experts).
• No hypothesis exists yet and the goal is creative divergence — use brainstorm instead (diverge before you converge).
• The action cannot be reversed or rolled back: if failure has permanent side effects, it is not a probe.
• The team needs a guaranteed outcome by a fixed deadline — probes produce signals, not commitments.
• The experiment would require production traffic or real user data to execute — probes must run in isolation.

Anti-Patterns

NEVER run a probe with production traffic

WHY: The value of a probe is learning at low cost; exposing real users to experimental code defeats this.

BAD: Route 10% of live customer requests to the experimental code path. GOOD: Shadow the calls or run against staging with synthetic data.

NEVER treat probe results as proof

WHY: Complex domains resist confirmation; one successful probe is a weak signal, not a decision.

BAD: “It worked once in isolation, so the approach scales.” GOOD: Record the result as confirmed and hand it to investigate for expert analysis.

NEVER design an irreversible probe

WHY: Reversibility is the core property that makes probing safe; irreversible probes transfer all risk back to the team.

BAD: Run a destructive schema migration on shared data to see what happens. GOOD: Use a staging branch or feature flag that can be rolled back.

NEVER skip Phase 1 qualification

WHY: Without pre-defined criteria, confirmation bias dominates and results are interpreted to fit the hypothesis rather than test it.

BAD: Start executing steps before confirm/refute criteria exist. GOOD: Pass the Phase 1 entry gate with constraints and criteria agreed first.

NEVER carry a failed hypothesis forward unchanged

WHY: Re-running the same experiment expecting different results is wishful thinking, not probing.

BAD: Re-probe a refuted hypothesis with a slightly bigger sample. GOOD: Revise the hypothesis, or route to brainstorm, before the next probe.

NEVER proceed on empty AskUserQuestion answers

WHY: An empty answer means the question was never shown, so any assumption replaces the user’s decision.

BAD: Treat blank answers as “Yes” and start Phase 2. GOOD: Present the options as a numbered text list and wait for the reply.

NEVER skip the thinking artifact

WHY: The artifact is the durable record that makes handoffs and later cycles possible; without it the learning is lost.

BAD: Go straight to the exit gate because the result seems obvious. GOOD: Write the artifact in the configured workspace before classifying and handing off.

NEVER start a probe without a hypothesis

WHY: A probe without a falsifiable statement has nothing to confirm or refute, so it produces noise.

BAD: Begin exploring because the topic “feels risky”. GOOD: Ask the user to state the hypothesis and do not proceed until one exists.

NEVER route a result against the handoff table

WHY: The transition encodes what the evidence supports; misrouting sends the next phase down the wrong path.

BAD: Send a refuted or surprise result to investigate. GOOD: Send refuted and surprise to brainstorm, confirmed and sufficient partial to investigate, and partial needing another angle to probe.

Usage Examples

Probing a new caching strategy:

# Problem: unknown whether Redis or Memcached fits the read pattern
# Probe: run both on 1% of traffic for 24h, measure hit rate + latency
# Reversible: yes (feature flag)

Probing a service extraction:

# Problem: unclear if extracting auth into a microservice reduces coupling
# Probe: shadow the auth calls for 48h without routing real traffic

Probing an LLM prompt strategy:

# Problem: uncertain whether chain-of-thought prompting improves accuracy for this task
# Probe: run 50 test cases through both zero-shot and CoT variants
# Confirm: CoT accuracy >= zero-shot + 10% on held-out eval set
# Refute: no measurable difference, or CoT latency cost exceeds acceptable threshold
# Reversible: yes (eval harness only, no production change)

Probing a database schema migration approach:

# Hypothesis: adding a surrogate UUID primary key reduces join complexity in reporting queries
# Step 1: create a staging branch with the new schema
# Step 2: run the existing reporting query suite against staging
./scripts/run-query-benchmarks.sh --env staging --compare main
# Step 3: compare execution plans and latency — confirm/refute threshold: >=20% reduction
# Reversible: yes (staging only, main schema untouched)

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References

Topic	Reference	When to Use
Probe types and observability	references/reference.md	Classifying the probe type and recording observations
Probe to investigate	references/probe-to-investigate-llm.md	Result is confirmed or partial with enough signal
Probe to brainstorm	references/probe-to-brainstorm-llm.md	Result is refuted or surprise
Probe to probe	references/probe-to-probe-llm.md	Result is partial and the hypothesis needs another angle

🔬 Probe → [constraints] → [steps] → [patterns] → [result] → GATE

🔬 Probe → [worktree, no prod writes] → [scaffold adapter, run unit tests] → [error surface, type compatibility] → confirmed → GATE

🔬 Probe → [staging env, read-only] → [send 3 API requests, inspect response] → [rate limit hit at step 2] → surprise → GATE