WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Making the point the room is about

Would a reader quote this line if they quoted one line?

CLAIM INSTEAD — the assertion owes evidence, and should carry a status mark

OBSERVATION INSTEAD — you are describing what is there rather than what it means

Asserting something you believe and must defend

Could this be shown false? Does it need a status — open, supported, refuted?

STATEMENT INSTEAD — the line is a turn in the argument rather than a testable belief

Reporting what is actually there, before what it means

Can you name the thing being observed in three words? That label is the form.

CLAIM INSTEAD — you have moved from noticing to arguing

Answering the question a reader would type

Is there a forty-to-a-hundred-word paragraph a stranger could lift whole and still be right?

STATEMENT INSTEAD — you want the claim at display size rather than the plain answer beneath it

Opening the room and saying which room it is

Is this the first thing on the page? A second Hero is a second chapter, and probably a second URL.

Quoting someone else, verbatim

Are these words yours? If they are not, they keep their own markdown, their source and their trims.

SNIPPET INSTEAD — the quoted thing is code or terminal output rather than prose

Showing the findings behind a claim

Does at least one row refute something? A list with no failures is advertising.

CLAIM INSTEAD — you are stating the belief rather than the receipts

Showing that independent authorities agree

Are there N values derived separately that must be identical — and would a mismatch be a named failure?

EVIDENCE INSTEAD — the findings are different facts rather than the same fact checked twice

Showing how a value was arrived at

Does the value fold down a graded scale by caps, so nobody had to assert the result?

EVIDENCE INSTEAD — the number was measured rather than derived

Showing the code or output itself

Is this verbatim, and would paraphrasing it be a lie?

Saying when this was published, and what it was built from

Does this page make a claim someone might need to date?

Letting someone cite you

Is this a published object — something a reader could reference in their own work?

PROVENANCE INSTEAD — you are showing the record behind the work rather than the reference to it

Declining to assert something

Is this the system working correctly by not answering? Then it is not an error state.

QUESTION INSTEAD — nobody is refusing anything — the matter is simply unresolved

Leaving something unresolved, at full size

Would burying this in a roadmap be more comfortable than printing it? Print it.

Showing which alternatives exist, and refusing the absent one

Are these physically present forms of one identity — and does asking for a missing one deserve a designed refusal?

COMPARISON INSTEAD — the two things are interpretations rather than alternatives of one identity

Showing what has to be true before the next step

Is each rung closed by its own criterion, in order, with no rung skippable?

TIMELINE INSTEAD — you are recording what happened rather than governing what may happen next

Cutting one object open and labelling its layers

Is everything disclosed at once, with nothing behind a click?

DECOMPOSITION INSTEAD — the reader should take it apart step by step rather than see it opened

Taking one thing apart, step by step

Does the reader control the pace? If the explanation should carry them, it is Unfolding.

UNFOLDING INSTEAD — the parts should arrive on their own — identical props, performed

Showing a physical layout to scale

Does the width of each field on screen mean its width in the artifact?

Showing one subject at several depths, on one URL

Are the explanation, the object and the clause the same subject rather than three subjects?

ANATOMY INSTEAD — the depths are parts of one object rather than registers of one explanation

Showing a field where only a subset ever activates

Is the point that most of it stays dormant, and which part lights depends on the input?

Showing a stream widened, judged, and brought back

Does the argument live in the widths — expand, judge channel by channel, compress?

Letting the reader query something real

Is there an executor behind this, answering for real? A recording of a terminal is a Film.

Showing the path between connected ideas

Does each step carry the relation that brought it there?

CONNECTION INSTEAD — you only need the doors out of the chapter, not the shape of the path

Showing one object read two ways

Should the reader drag between the interpretations themselves?

TRANSFORMATION INSTEAD — the change should perform itself — identical props, its cinematic sibling

Performing a change between two states of one thing

Is it a staged swap rather than a crossfade? Two physical forms of one object never dissolve into each other.

COMPARISON INSTEAD — the pace belongs to the reader

Letting the parts of a thing arrive on their own

Same props as Decomposition — is the reader watching rather than operating?

Showing many inputs compiled down to one output

Do the inputs lose their separateness by the end?

PROCESSION INSTEAD — one thing passes through stages and stays itself

Showing one thing pass through every stage in order

Is it the same object at the end, having been somewhere?

Showing a scale nobody can hold in their head

Does each arrival rescale the world — powers of ten rather than a bar chart?

Showing throughput against a fixed capacity

Is the constraint the conduit rather than the quantity?

Showing values snapped onto a lattice

Is the loss the subject — what rounding actually does, rather than a claim about it?

Playing an actual film

Does a real film exist? If not, the library holds the form and shows nothing.

Ending the chapter and opening the next

Does the sentence raise the next chapter's question rather than summarise this one?

Telling what happened, in order

Does every line carry a date? If they do not, this is prose, not a history.

PROVENANCE INSTEAD — the history belongs to one published object rather than to the subject