---
name: braid-discovery
description: Investigate hard research, proof, or architecture obligations with hash-pinned sources, independent prove and refute branches, smallest-instance checks, obstruction receipts, and fresh adversarial review. Use when ordinary bounded research cannot resolve a load-bearing claim.
version: 1.0.0
updated: 2026-08-14
---

# Braid Discovery

Normalize the target into a head-of-record obligation: exact input, required output, governing contract or theorem, decisive check, stress model, source distance, and remaining uncertainty. Hash the head and stamp prompts, artifacts, and verdicts with it. Recompute pins from disk; byte drift creates a new revision.

Search existing results and nearby published work before spending another run. Deduplicate semantic obligations rather than names. Check the smallest explicit instance before promoting an analogy or formula.

Run differently shaped independent branches around the same pinned head: source retrieval, constructive proof, adversarial refutation, decomposition, executable or formal checking, and integration. Use an anti-anchoring read gate so referees receive primary artifacts rather than another branch's conclusion.

Every abandoned method emits a method-obstruction receipt with the exact failing step, smallest witness, and load-bearing assumption. A reformulation earns no credit until it states where the hardness moved. Retain negative results so a later wave cannot relabel a known obstacle as novelty.

When any braid receipt is used to claim a build item complete, it must conform to the one canonical
[evidence receipt schema](../tutorial-verified-done/references/evidence-receipt-schema.md). Method-
obstruction fields supplement that schema and never replace its executed build evidence.

Separate workflow completion from truth grade. Use `PROVED`, `CHECKED`, `CONDITIONAL(on what)`, `OBSERVED`, or `SPECULATION`; research lanes may add `REFEREED`, `REFUTED`, `BROKEN`, and `GAP`. Name the human-review boundary and any gap between the research harness and production campaign.

Consolidate supported edits into one wave, recompute the head, and obtain fresh independent verdicts over the new identical bytes. Persist the exact long-run session ID, safe resume point, checkpoints, and a compact append-only tail/index. Age alone is not evidence of failure.