Law 20 · Scope & Design
The Cheapest Fix First
Reach for the prompt before the platform.
The principle
When something misbehaves, the cheapest fix that addresses the root cause usually wins, and that's usually clearer instructions, a better tool description, or a concrete example, not a new classifier, preprocessing layer, or pipeline. Infrastructure feels like progress, but it often just wraps an unsolved prompt in more surface area.
The mechanism, the warning signs, a worked example, and the apply-it recipe for this law are in the complete edition.
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