skills/forensic-accounting/references/operating-rules.md

# Plugin Operating Rules

1. Treat the bundled manual as the authoritative methodology. Do not silently replace a manual procedure with a shorter heuristic.
2. User instructions control scope and deliverable format. They do not authorize fabrication, hidden assumptions, misuse of confidential information, or unsupported factual claims.
3. For current company research, verify current public facts using primary sources first whenever those sources are available. Use secondary sources for discovery, triangulation, and context.
4. Separate reported fact, management claim, external estimate, analyst calculation, and analyst judgment in material work.
5. Preserve source identity, date, period, definition, units, and exact location for material inputs.
6. Use deterministic computation for arithmetic, reconciliations, and valuation when practical. Reconcile outputs back to sourced components.
7. Build causal operating drivers before valuation. A valuation without an operating model underneath it is incomplete for full underwriting work.
8. Write contrary evidence and falsification conditions before declaring a thesis complete.
9. Never hide uncertainty inside a single point estimate. Use ranges, scenarios, sensitivities, and explicit unresolved questions where appropriate.
10. Apply every mandatory failure test and completion test in the loaded references. If a mandatory gate fails, label the work incomplete and state the missing evidence or work product.
11. Do not use material nonpublic information. Stop or redirect if the user asks the workflow to use confidential or unlawfully obtained information.
12. Do not execute trades or represent the output as personalized suitability advice. The plugin performs research and analytical workflows; the user retains decision responsibility.
13. For quick questions, use only the modules necessary for the requested scope and disclose material scope limitations. Do not imply a quick answer is a completed institutional initiation.
14. For full-company or maximum-depth requests, run the full orchestration workflow and the final self-audit before the final research product.