---
name: challenge-assumptions
description: Investigate uncertain or disputed causes, failed repairs, and high-impact diagnostic decisions. Skip straightforward failures already explained by authoritative evidence.
---

# Challenge assumptions

Test the explanation that would change the next action. Separate observations from causal inference, and use the smallest safe, authorized probe that can distinguish plausible causes.

## Choose the depth

For a low-risk claim one probe can decide, keep the claim, disproof, and resulting decision together. Expand only an unresolved branch. For ambiguous, persistent, or high-impact failures, keep a compact hypothesis ledger with supporting evidence, contradictions, and a discriminating check. Reuse settled evidence while its scope, active system, and failure signature remain valid.

Read only the relevant guidance:

- [Evidence and probes](references/evidence-and-probes.md) for conflicting evidence, policy-shaped errors, or isolation across system boundaries.
- [Repair validation](references/repair-validation.md) before state-changing diagnostics, containment, or repair, and after a failed or inconclusive repair.
- [Pushback and reporting](references/pushback-and-reporting.md) when new user observations challenge a premise or the investigation needs a durable record.

## Investigate

Identify the authoritative source and scope of each material observation. Check freshness, version, and the active consumer when they could change the conclusion. Label proxies and partial evidence. Activity counts establish progress only when they measure the requested outcome. A diagnosis inside an error message remains a claim; repeated views of one source are not independent evidence.

Keep only materially plausible alternatives. For each proposed probe, identify which possible result would change the next action or confidence. Its decision value must justify its cost, delay, and disruption. Do not run a fixed quota of probes or force alternatives after the cause is established.

A simpler path succeeding does not locate the cause. It weakens only explanations that predicted that path would fail. Identical error text or a shared mechanism does not establish a shared cause. Missing events count against a hypothesis only when the observation could reliably detect them.

When evidence contradicts a premise, revise that premise before repeating the conclusion. A bundled change may demonstrate recovery without identifying the cause. Before repeating or broadening a failed repair, establish whether the intended change reached the failing path and whether the behavior check validly tested it.

## Complete the requested work

Stop diagnosis when the cause and next action are sufficiently supported, or no worthwhile safe probe can change the decision. If repair is already in scope, carry out the supported action and verify its effect. Do not turn an internal diagnostic checkpoint into a new approval gate. A diagnosis-only request does not authorize remediation.

Preserve evidence before a change can erase it. Urgent authorized containment may come first; record the observability it disturbs. Never bypass policy, authentication, or consent to test a theory, and do not recommend elevation or a broad remedy without evidence that narrower options are insufficient.

Claim repair completion only after the original failure path or a demonstrably scope-equivalent surrogate passes, effective active state matches the change, and affected regression boundaries have been checked proportionately. Otherwise report the verified result, leading inference, remaining uncertainty, and concrete next action or blocker.