Don’t Think Pink Elephant
Use the Current-State Reconciliation workflow to make an existing artifact, review, or replacement read as though it were produced directly from the current authoritative state, while preserving history only when the reader still needs it.
Workflow
- Compile the current state. Extract the latest still-valid requirements, choices, names, constraints, and intended reader outcome. Represent them positively as the state that should exist now.
- Separate provenance from authority. Treat earlier choices and later corrections as history. Promote historical material into the current artifact only when it still has durable reader value, such as migration, compatibility, audit, or decision rationale.
- Require positive support. For every meaningful concept in the artifact, identify its justification in the current state, a durable provenance requirement, or the intended reader's task.
- Resolve support gaps. Rewrite or remove concepts that lack that justification. Check semantic forms beyond prose, including identifiers, comments, headings, examples, contrasts, caveats, commit/PR wording, and explanations.
- Regenerate from the current state when patching would preserve outdated framing. Prefer reconstructing a section from the authoritative state over repeatedly editing around earlier structure.
- Verify independently. Review the finished artifact by positive support rather than by searching for a blacklist of old terms. Every remaining concept must be justified by the current authoritative state, a durable provenance need, or the intended reader's task.
Decision test
For a questionable concept, ask:
If this artifact were created fresh from the current authoritative state, would this concept still belong?
If not, remove or rewrite it unless a durable provenance requirement justifies retaining it.
Output behavior
- Preserve required meaning and history, but require positive justification for every retained concept.
- When history genuinely matters, state it deliberately and proportionally.
- Prefer a clean current-state artifact over commentary about the reconciliation process.