frontend-patterns/research/plan/OpenQuestions.md

Open Questions

Core ontology

• Is Authority → Projection → Affordance a better primary axis than traditional "state management" terminology?
• Should Mutation represent intent, transport, state transition, or be split?
• Is Reconciliation independent enough to be a first-class responsibility?
• Should Communication Window become a canonical dimension?

Pattern language

• What qualifies as a pattern rather than a technique?
• How much implementation detail belongs in canonical patterns?
• How do we represent patterns that only make sense at one scale?
• How should pattern relations be validated?

Agentic use

• Which metadata is necessary for useful pattern retrieval?
• Should the pattern graph be exported as JSON/YAML/RDF?
• Can force matching be made quantitative without creating false precision?
• Can architecture review be expressed as unresolved-force detection?

Evidence

• What makes a frontend pattern "established"?
• Should known uses be manually curated or automatically mined?
• How should contradictory source claims be represented?

Investigation ledger

All entries are open. Update status and evidence links as research proceeds; retaining a hypothesis requires evidence just as rejecting one does.

Question	Working hypothesis	Disconfirmation exercise	Owner workplan
Q01 Responsibility coverage	Nine responsibilities explain the seed cases	Record any important decision that cannot be mapped without distortion	FEP-WP-0002
Q02 Independence	Authority and projection can vary independently	Compare server-authoritative and local-first decisions; identify forced coupling	FEP-WP-0002
Q03 Pattern recurrence	Candidates describe reusable configurations	Seek independent uses and a counterexample; reject product-specific restatements	FEP-WP-0002
Q04 Generativity	Resulting contexts make later decisions easier	Compare walkthrough with a plain narrative and change one constraint	FEP-WP-0002
Q05 Sequence ordering	The general sequence works with explicit branches	Test offline, collaboration and quality requirements that force earlier decisions	FEP-WP-0003
Q06 Scale and boundaries	Composition and deployment are distinct dimensions	Analyze independently owned features that deploy together, and the reverse	FEP-WP-0003
Q07 Retrieval	Metadata improves relevant, justified recommendations	Held-out prompts including ambiguity, incompatibility and abstention	FEP-WP-0004

First-cycle update — 2026-09-24

AuthorityPilot records an initial manual comparison. Q02 remains open: distinguish authority scope and acknowledgement semantics before claiming independent responsibility dimensions. Q03 remains open because source statements do not alone establish recurrence. Q04 awaits VC-01/VC-02 walkthroughs. The failed provider runs are execution failures, not negative evidence for the model.

Transactional contrast — 2026-09-25

VC-01/VC-02 assessment sharpens Q02: local drafts do not imply local authority. Q03 lacks independent frontend uses; Q04 remains unknown despite two complete synthetic narratives. No question is closed by pattern count.

2026-09-25 follow-up: pinned frontend code supports two partial draft-separation uses, but not full-pattern recurrence. Review attempt yielded no adopted model fixes; editorial lifecycle corrections do not resolve Q04 usefulness.

Q04 presentation pilot — 2026-09-26

Matched pilot completed six new briefs under two equivalent-information conditions. Q04 remains open: small mixed descriptive differences, same-author editorial scoring and pending human adjudication do not establish usefulness. The six briefs are consumed pilot material, not future held-out items. Next: independent ratings before changing guidance or replicating.