concepts/bounded-commitment.md

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{"aliases":["bounded change"],"authority":"informational-only","id":"bounded-commitment","schema_version":1,"term":"bounded commitment"}
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# Bounded commitment

## Meaning

A change whose replacement, verification, and cleanup can be completed within one goal-sized change before dependent work fans out.

## Decision rule

Treat a choice as low commitment only when a credible replacement can be implemented, verified, and cleaned up within one goal-sized change before fan-out. Otherwise keep it classified as high commitment and preserve alternatives, assumptions, evidence, structural cost, and a falsifiable validation signal before committing descendants. High fan-out is a cost signal, not a permanent prohibition: proceed when one option clearly dominates under reviewed policy or when a human explicitly reviews the exact design decision. Record that review and invalidate it after a material design change; never infer design approval from policy approval, an ordinary PR, or unrelated review.

## Scope and authority

This concept classifies engineering change cost. It grants no authority and cannot weaken user, safety, repository, reviewed policy, goal, privacy, security, review, deployment, or external-write boundaries.

## Examples

- A private helper with focused tests and no persisted state or downstream consumers is usually bounded.
- A branch-local module boundary with one known caller can be bounded when replacement and cleanup fit one verified goal.

## Counterexamples

- A durable-data migration, published interface, foundational project architecture, or change already inherited by stacked descendants is not bounded merely because Git can revert it or because a human reviewed the design.
- A choice requiring long-lived compatibility code, external spending, deployment, or weakened safeguards is not bounded.

## Parameters and invariants

Projects may define what fits one goal-sized change and which structural fan-out signals apply. Explicit review can authorize commitment to an acknowledged high-cost design but cannot make it low commitment. The recovery bound, complete cleanup requirement, current exact-design review, and authority constraints are fixed invariants.

## Aliases and related concepts

`bounded change` is an explicit alias. Related ideas include goal-sized change, fan-out, compatibility burden, and falsifiable validation; they are not loaded or treated as synonyms unless separately defined and linked.

## Compatibility

Introduced with the concept-reference mechanism. Material changes to the recovery bound or authority constraints require compatibility review of affected policy, prompts, goals, acceptance evidence, and stacked work.