Research Constitution

Status: Version 1.0

Purpose: Define the non-negotiable rules for evidence-driven research in Framework Engineering and related procedural reasoning work.

1. Every claim begins as a hypothesis.
2. Every hypothesis must have a kill condition.
3. Observations and interpretations must be recorded separately.
4. Products consume research findings; products do not validate research findings.
5. New abstractions must explain observations that existing abstractions cannot.
6. Prefer narrowing hypotheses over expanding theories.
7. Retire hypotheses that consistently fail.
8. Every evidence run must declare which hypotheses it tests before execution.
9. Every evidence run must pass through an Evidence Decision Record before any hypothesis review or queue decision.
10. Confidence may not be updated directly from an evidence run.
11. Confidence may increase only when evidence survives a meaningful test and subsequent review.
12. Internal model agreement is evidence, not validation.
13. Human validation and domain expert validation remain separate evidence classes.
14. Do not add infrastructure unless it increases evidence quality or experiment speed.
15. Do not protect the theory from evidence.
16. If the evidence changes the architecture, change the architecture.

Interpretation Rule

The constitution governs research behavior, not product behavior. Clarity and EDF may use research findings only after they survive appropriate review.