Unit 05.01: A rule you can write down does not belong in a prompt

If you can write the rule down, writing it down is strictly better than delegating it.

Free, identical, and testable

A routing rule written down as five conditions: no tokens, the same answer every run, and checkable case by case.

The example below routes five tickets.

I was charged twice          -> billing
cannot log in                -> general
the export crashes           -> technical
just saying hello            -> general
my login is broken           -> accounts

cost: 0 tokens, identical every run, five lines of tests

The last ticket matches both "login" and "broken". The rule resolves it by the order of the checks - a decision you can see in the source and change deliberately.

An agent resolves the same ambiguity however it resolves it that run, does not record which way it went, and may go the other way tomorrow. The ambiguity is real in both cases; only one of them lets you decide what to do about it.

The mistake this prevents

The mistake is concluding from an ambiguous case that the decision needs judgement after all. Ambiguity means the rule needs a tie-break. Writing the tie-break down is better than delegating it to something that will not tell you which way it went.

Takeaway

Write down every rule you can. An ambiguous case argues for an explicit tie-break, not for handing the decision to something you cannot inspect.

Mark complete