Kenning
whale·road
03 · Editor · defensive-01-fallbacks
← back to When Things Go Wrong

Write the failure paths

core

Brief

A month-end reconciliation instruction that is competent at the work and silent about everything that could go wrong with it. It has been running for two months without incident, which is the usual reason nobody has looked at it.

It also contains one instruction that is worse than silence. You should be able to find it.

Task

Rewrite this so that each of the four situations below has a defined response: an incomplete bank feed, a transaction that maps to no account, a closing variance beyond a threshold you set, and the same transaction appearing twice.

Each response needs a trigger someone else could apply the same way twice. Attach the reason to your prohibitions. Keep the working instructions — this is addition and repair, not a rewrite from scratch — and stay under about 320 tokens.

Graded on

Every situation has a responseRequired×4.0
No fallback that invents a figureRequired×3.0
Triggers someone else could apply×2.5
At least one path stops the work×1.5
Prohibitions carry their reason×2.0
Within budget×1.5
Free of unverifiable assurance×1.5
Required — a miss caps the score, whatever the rest do.

Hints

system prompt
counting…
submitting is cheap — resubmit as often as you like