Manual sections
The Clarity Contract
No clarity, no start.
Work starts when intent is clear enough to sign. Not before.
No clarity, no start.
- Where ambiguity gets in
- Before: an unclear start
- In the tunnel
- Is this tunnel worth digging, and where is the exit?
- Enforced by
- The Lens
The principle
Clarity has a price, and it is paid up front. Before work starts, someone has to write down what is in, what is out, who owns it, and what done means. That is the Clarity Contract: the cost of answering the hard questions while they are still cheap.
Skip it, and the questions do not go away. They become assumptions, and assumptions come due later, with interest. That bill is The Assumption Tax.
The Clarity Contract is also the answer to corporate jargon. "Aligned", "as soon as possible" and "make it better" let everyone agree while nobody commits. A contract has to be specific enough that someone could be held to it.
What it asks
- Boundaries in writing. In scope and out of scope, both stated. What is not said is assumed.
- Owners who are people. A team cannot own an outcome. A named person can.
- A Definition of Ready that is met, not waived with a promise to catch up.
- A Definition of Done written before the work, so the exit exists before the entrance is used.
- Open questions named. An unknown with an owner is a risk. An unknown nobody wrote down is an assumption.
The test
If two competent people built from the signed scope separately, would they build the same thing?
What a broken contract looks like
- The kickoff where "we will figure it out as we go" is the plan.
- A Definition of Done written after the work, describing what was built.
- A requirement that is a sentiment: modern, intuitive, scalable, user-friendly.
- A signature collected to get started, from someone who did not read what they signed.
In the product
The Lens enforces the contract. It scores readiness across six axes, forces the choice between a Scope Card and a Scope Charter, and blocks export until the named signers have signed.