Invalidate the lore

Invalidate the Lore

Turn team beliefs into testable claims, test them cheaply, and log the verdicts where nobody can un-log them.

Gate

Works best with gate: instrumented = open, but may run earlier — some lore dies to data that already exists (support tickets, store reviews, git history, server logs). No gate blocks collecting lore; only verdicts need evidence.

Inputs

• Beliefs, harvested from: the user/founder directly ("tell me five things you know about your users"), docs and READMEs, PR discussions, support threads, marketing copy (every headline is a belief).
• Whatever data exists. GROWTH.md ## Lore ledger as working memory.

Steps

1. Harvest without judging. Collect beliefs verbatim, attributed and dated. The confident ones and the load-bearing ones first — a belief that steers the roadmap is worth ten idle opinions.

2. Sharpen each into a claim. Rewrite as something falsifiable: "users churn because onboarding is long" → "churned users abandoned during onboarding at a higher rate than retained users." If a belief can't be sharpened, log it undecidable with the reason — that's a verdict too.

3. Design the cheapest kill. For each claim, the minimum test: usually a query, sometimes a cohort comparison, occasionally a real experiment (route those to run-the-loop). Order by load-bearing-ness ÷ cost. Independent claims fan out well — one lane per belief, verified separately.

4. Run and rule. confirmed / busted / undecidable, each with an evidence link. Busted lore gets a one-line epitaph. Never bust by counter-assertion — no evidence, no verdict.

5. Ledger it. Append to GROWTH.md ## Lore ledger (date, author, belief, status, evidence). Surface the two or three verdicts that should change what the team does next — a ledger nobody reads is a diary.

Conventions

• Gut feeling isn't banned; it's promoted — from conclusion to hypothesis. Say this out loud when harvesting; it keeps people honest and unhumiliated.
• The ledger is append-only. Corrections are new entries citing old ones.
• Treat your own analyses as lore too: a conclusion this skill produced last quarter is a belief this quarter.

Edge Cases

• The ledger only ever confirms. Audit the sharpening step — soft claims produce soft confirmations. A healthy ledger busts things.
• Belief held by the person paying for the work. Test it exactly as carefully, deliver the verdict exactly as plainly, with the evidence doing the talking.
• Two beliefs conflict. Perfect — at most one survives. Test the pair together and log both verdicts.
• No data whatsoever. Convert the top beliefs into the instrumentation wishlist and route to instrument-the-truth; log everything harvested as untested so the debt is visible.