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| feedback-one-shot-instruments-are-proportionate | A one-shot measurement is proportionate to a question asked once and is NOT a prime-directive violation — the counterfactual is an assertion, not a durable tool. What violates the directive is re-writing an instrument already banked. |
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Steward, 2026-08-08, after a week of visibly bad instrument base-rate: "do we need so many single-use items? This seems to flow against our prime directive — but I honestly don't know."
The answer is no, and the worry is one notch off from where it lands.
Why one-shots are not the violation. τὸ πρόσφορον cuts the other way: building a tested, general, reusable instrument to answer a question asked once is the disproportion. A measurement is not a build — you do not rebuild a thermometer reading, you take a new one. And the decisive point:
The counterfactual for a one-shot script is almost never a durable instrument. It is an assertion.
Before we measured, these claims came from reading and intuition. The one-shot did not displace a tool; it displaced a guess. Its fault rate only looks like degradation because a guess has no observable fault rate at all. A visibly failing instrument is strictly better than an unfalsifiable hunch, and mistaking the first for decline is how a system talks itself out of measuring.
What IS the violation: re-writing what is already banked. Same session, I wrote a
link-resolution canary inline — and that canary is in /wake-up and on
reference-verification-ladder. Not proportion; failure to reach. Rule of three: an
instrument reached for a third time stops being one-shot and goes to the ladder.
How to apply it. When the fault rate looks alarming, do not conclude "build fewer
one-shots" — ask the answerable question instead: which one-shots are being written
repeatedly, and were they promoted? That is now counted, as the K column of
/wrap-up §8's Instruments field (N run · M with a control written before first
execution · K duplicating something banked). Three or four wraps will show a pattern or
show none; neither of us could answer it from one day.
The distinction that generalizes: too few promoted is a different diagnosis from too many built, and only the first is actionable. Related: feedback-checkable-claim-surfaces-bugs, feedback-resurface-banked-notes-before-rederiving.