metawork-diagnose

metawork-diagnose

Status: v0.1 stub. Implement Phase 8 of the build order alongside metawork-retro, once breakdown patterns are observable.

Purpose

When the practice slips, name the breakdown precisely instead of letting it drift further. Distinguish causes that sit inside Meta Work (re-tunable within the methodology) from causes that sit outside it (route to the right adjacent practice).

Inputs

• Symptom description from the user, or an observation surfaced by metawork-retro.
• Optional: the specific Meta Work Group(s) involved.

Outputs

• A diagnosis: which breakdown pattern this matches and why.
• A recommended next move: a specific Meta Work intervention, an adjacent practice hand-off, or a scope/altitude/strata re-calibration.

Diagnostic patterns (v1 starting set)

• Escapist conflation — what looks like Meta Work is actually yak-shaving. Surface the missed scheduled commitment; ask the 5-whys question: "what about the scheduled work felt avoidable in the moment?"
• Scope-axis mismatch — a group's horizons_of_focus value doesn't match the altitude at which the user is actually trying to make decisions. Often a 10000ft-projects group being used to grapple with 20000ft-areas questions, or vice versa.
• Developmental-altitude pressure — the prompts in the group are pitched above (or below) the user's vertical_development_stage. Often shows up as "I keep writing the same thing in the polarities section" or "the fitness functions feel arbitrary."
• Panarchy-level confusion — a parent group's signals are landing in the child group instead of being addressed at the parent's level.
• Fitness-function drift — measures defined but never checked; or checked but always-green (suggesting the threshold is wrong).
• Polarities tilting — one pole of a named polarity has run away; practice needs a deliberate pull back to the opposite pole. Reference: references/pillars/polarity-management.md.
• Practice-itself failure — the cadence isn't working. Hand off to daily-kaizen-audit to inspect the practice rather than the content.

Hand-offs

Diagnosis	Hand off to
Practice-itself failure	daily-kaizen-audit
Structural breakdown needing RCA	lean-thinking-praxis (5 Whys / A3)
Developmental pressure beyond Meta Work scope	vertical-development-scholarship
Inner-work breakdown (e.g., parts conflict surfacing)	(deferred to v2; for now: positive-disintegration-scholar for adjacent reading)
AI-session friction (this conversation, not the Meta Work)	ai-session-kaizen-retro