test-driver/research/findings/F-0008-temperature-may-be-redundant.md

id	type	class	status	discovered	discovered_by	workplan	task	carried_to
F-0008	framework-finding	UNNECESSARY_COMPLEXITY	resolved	2026-08-23	TD-WP-0002-T10	TD-WP-0002	TD-WP-0002-T10	TD-WP-0003-T04

F-0008 — Temperature may be redundant; measured stability did the work

Observation

Temperature (HOT / WARM / COOL / COLD) is one of the more prominent ideas in INTENT.md and the Concept Model. It is supposed to govern which verification mode an asset uses, and it is the mechanism by which "tests crystallize as software cools".

The spike built crystallization end to end. Temperature was never consulted, never implemented, and never missed.

What actually triggered freezing was assess_stability: the same realization path observed across several consecutive runs. Nothing declared the surface cold; the surface was observed to have stopped moving.

The argument for removal

The two mechanisms answer the same question, and only one of them can be wrong:

	Temperature	Measured stability
source	declared by a human	observed from runs
upkeep	must be maintained and kept honest	none
failure mode	says COLD while the surface churns	none — it is the churn
already built	no	yes

A declared temperature is a claim about the system that nobody verifies. The project's own first heuristic — do not let a declaration substitute for evidence — argues against keeping it.

The argument for keeping it

Two cases measured stability cannot cover:

1. Forward-looking scope. A team knows a rewrite lands next month. Temperature can say HOT before any run has observed instability, where measured stability would happily freeze an asset the day before it breaks.
2. Cheap prioritisation. Deciding where to spend effort across many capabilities may want a coarse label without running anything.

Neither case arose in the spike, and neither is evidenced.

Recommendation

Do not delete yet; do not build either. Carry Temperature as explicitly unvalidated in the fitness map, and set a gate: if the next workplan completes without any decision consulting it, remove it from the concept model.

Recorded now because the compression review's purpose is to catch concepts that survive on the strength of being attractive rather than useful, and Temperature is currently the clearest instance in the corpus.

Related

Confidence, Campaign, Metabolism and Retirement are in the same position — declared, unimplemented, never consulted — but Temperature is the one with a built alternative already doing its job, which makes it the decidable case.

Resolution — 2026-09-28

T04 removes Temperature from the current concept set. Three synthetic use cases and the expanded structural experiment require no temperature decision; observed trajectory stability continues to govern crystallization. No replacement gate.