Mutual Dependency Stabilization

batch: First Iteration/Batch 09/Wave 2

Reciprocal Dependency Stabilization

notes: Emphasizes the bidirectional dependency being stabilized.

Interdependency Stabilization

notes: A broader wording often used when more than two parties or subsystems are involved.

Fragile Dependency Stabilization

notes: Highlights the fragility diagnosis rather than the mutuality of the relation.

Co-Dependency Stabilization

notes: Usable in non-clinical contexts but should be avoided when it could imply psychological diagnosis.

source_primes: symbiosis coupling resilience

related_primes: fault_tolerance functional_redundancy feedback accountability boundary observability

slug: symbiosis

slug: accountability

slug: observability

components:
Reciprocal Dependency Map
Critical Dependency Threshold
Failure Propagation Map
Stabilizing Buffer
Fallback or Substitution Path
Shared Monitoring Signal
Risk-Sharing Rule
Commitment and Service Guarantee
Escalation and Repair Protocol
Autonomy and Exit Guardrail
Joint Contingency Budget
Role Substitution Plan
Dependency Stress Test
Shared Learning Cadence
Dependency Power Review

mechanisms: Co-Insurance or Risk-Pooling Arrangement

essence_one_line: Stabilize a necessary interdependency so neither side’s failure, exit, overload, or opportunism destabilizes the other.

compression_statement: When parties, systems, or components must depend on each other but the dependency is fragile, add buffers, fallback paths, credible commitments, shared monitoring, risk-sharing rules, and repair protocols so reciprocal viability survives stress.

core_intuition: Mutual dependency is not automatically healthy. The relation becomes safer when the parties know what each depends on, can see degradation early, have prearranged support, and can absorb or reroute failure before it cascades.

canonical_formula: Mutual dependency + fragility diagnosis + stabilizers + fallback + shared repair → reciprocal continuity under stress.

structural_problem: A necessary reciprocal dependency is operationally, socially, ecologically, or strategically fragile: one side’s shock, nonperformance, withdrawal, overload, or opportunism can quickly damage the other side, yet the relation cannot simply be severed without losing important capability or value.

condition: Each side materially relies on the other for continuity, capacity, legitimacy, access, information, protection, or maintenance.

diagnostic_question: Would degradation or withdrawal on either side impair the other side’s ability to function?

condition: The dependency is valuable enough to preserve but fragile enough that ordinary disruption can cascade across the relation.

diagnostic_question: Does a local outage, shortage, nonresponse, or overload become a shared crisis faster than the parties can improvise a response?

condition: One party can shift risk, costs, delay, or recovery burden onto the other because obligations are implicit or asymmetric.

diagnostic_question: Who pays when the dependency fails, and was that burden agreed before the failure occurred?

condition: The parties need credible continuity expectations but cannot fully eliminate uncertainty or dependence.

diagnostic_question: Could better signals, buffers, and commitments make the dependency reliable enough to plan around?

condition: Fallbacks exist informally but are untested, under-resourced, or known only to a few people.

diagnostic_question: If the dependency is stressed tomorrow, does everyone know which path activates and what level of service is realistic?

symptoms: Repeated near misses where one side’s small disruption produces disproportionate trouble for the other.

symptoms: A partner, supplier, subsystem, or community actor is described as indispensable but receives little explicit support or protection.

symptoms: The relationship relies on goodwill, heroics, informal favors, or hidden slack rather than defined stabilizers.

symptoms: Failure analysis repeatedly discovers the same single point of mutual dependence after incidents occur.

symptoms: One side hesitates to invest, coordinate, or plan because it cannot trust the other side’s future availability.

symptoms: Support obligations are renegotiated during crisis rather than prearranged during normal conditions.

root_tension: The relation is valuable because the parties are coupled, but that same coupling makes each side vulnerable to the other side’s stress, exit, or opportunism unless the dependency is made visible, buffered, bounded, and repairable.

anti_signatures: The parties are merely cooperative but do not materially depend on each other for continuity or viability.

anti_signatures: The core problem is one-sided extraction or benefit misalignment rather than fragility of a necessary dependency; use symbiotic_alignment first.

anti_signatures: The right intervention is to decouple entirely because the dependency is unnecessary, unsafe, or coercive.

anti_signatures: A simple backup component fully solves the issue without reciprocal obligations or shared risk.

anti_signatures: The relation is adversarial, abusive, or coercive; stabilization would entrench harm rather than preserve legitimate mutual function.

anti_signatures: The dependency failure is a one-off inconvenience rather than a recurring structural vulnerability.

structural_intervention: Expose the reciprocal dependency, identify the ways failure or opportunism propagates across it, then install stabilizers such as buffers, fallback paths, risk-sharing rules, minimum commitments, shared monitoring, escalation paths, and autonomy guardrails.

Map the reciprocal dependency.

logic: Identify what each side needs from the other, how frequently it is needed, how failure would appear, and which functions cannot be replaced quickly.

name: Locate propagation pathways and thresholds.

logic: Trace how stress, nonperformance, delay, or withdrawal would move through the relation and define the thresholds where ordinary degradation becomes shared instability.

name: Choose stabilizers matched to the fragility mode.

logic: Use buffers for temporary shortages, fallback paths for substitution, risk-sharing rules for cost allocation, commitments for credibility, and monitoring for early warning.

name: Make support credible before stress arrives.

logic: Define minimum service, response time, emergency authority, reserve access, or reciprocal obligations while the parties can still negotiate calmly.

name: Test and adapt the stabilization design.

logic: Run drills, incident reviews, audits, or tabletop exercises so the parties discover hidden assumptions and update the design.

Preserve autonomy and safe exit.

logic: Ensure stabilization does not create captivity, abusive dependence, monopoly control, or irreversible vulnerability for the weaker party.

decision_rules: Use this archetype when a reciprocal dependency is worth preserving and failure would propagate across parties, subsystems, or domains.

decision_rules: Do not intensify the dependency before evaluating whether safer decoupling, modularization, or substitution is the better intervention.

decision_rules: Choose the stabilizer by failure mode: overload needs capacity or load sharing; nonperformance needs commitments and enforcement; shock needs buffers and fallback; opportunism needs accountability and risk-sharing.

decision_rules: Treat informal goodwill as a signal of latent dependency, not as a sufficient stabilization mechanism.

decision_rules: If the main design goal is mutual value creation rather than fragility reduction, classify the case under symbiotic_alignment and use this as a variant.

decision_rules: Require explicit review when one party has much less bargaining power, because stabilization can otherwise harden an unfair relation.

Preserved Autonomy

description: Stabilization should not eliminate exit, bargaining power, fallback capacity, or independent safety.

Lower Cascade Risk

description: Disruptions in one side are less likely to propagate quickly or unexpectedly into the other.

Improved Trust Without Blind Dependence

prose_essence:
Mutual Dependency Stabilization protects a necessary reciprocal dependency from becoming a point of collapse. It applies when two or more parties, systems, or components genuinely rely on one another, but that reliance is fragile: a shortage, outage, exit, overload, or opportunistic move on one side can quickly destabilize the other.

The archetype does not merely recommend cooperation. It asks what each side depends on, where the dependency becomes critical, how failure would propagate, and what stabilizers should exist before stress arrives. Typical stabilizers include buffers, fallback paths, shared monitoring, risk-sharing rules, credible support commitments, escalation paths, and repair protocols.

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when the dependency is both valuable and dangerous. The relation should be worth preserving, but not safe to leave informal. It is especially useful when each side can name a function, resource, capacity, signal, or commitment it needs from the other and when failure would propagate faster than ad hoc improvisation can handle.

Do not use it simply because two parties cooperate. If the main problem is that the relationship lacks mutual benefit, use **Symbiotic Alignment**. If the main problem is technical incompatibility, use **Interoperability Standardization**. If the safest answer is to exit, decouple, or protect a weaker party from coercive dependence, stabilization may be the wrong intervention.

prose_structural_problem:
A mutually dependent relation can be useful in normal conditions but brittle under stress. One side may appear healthy while silently relying on the other side’s hidden slack, informal favors, unmeasured standby capacity, or willingness to absorb shocks. When disruption arrives, the relation fails as a whole because the dependency was never mapped, funded, monitored, or given a fallback path.

The structural tension is that coupling creates value and vulnerability at the same time. The parties cannot simply pretend to be independent, but they also cannot let shared fate become unmanaged fragility.

prose_intervention_logic:
The intervention begins by exposing reciprocal dependence. What does each side need from the other? How often? Under what conditions? What breaks first? Then it maps propagation: how does stress cross the boundary, and where are the critical thresholds? Only after that should the designer choose stabilizers.

A stable design usually combines several moves. Buffers absorb temporary stress. Fallback paths preserve continuity when the primary relation falters. Shared monitoring reduces surprise. Risk-sharing rules prevent one side from carrying all the cost. Commitments make support credible. Escalation and repair protocols turn crisis response from improvisation into a rehearsed pathway. Autonomy guardrails prevent stabilization from becoming lock-in.

prose_key_components:
### Reciprocal Dependency Map

`reciprocal_dependency_map` — Shows what each party, subsystem, or component depends on the other to provide, absorb, signal, maintain, or protect. This is the diagnostic core of the archetype. It distinguishes mutual dependency stabilization from ordinary risk management by making both directions of dependence explicit.

### Critical Dependency Threshold

`critical_dependency_threshold` — Defines the point at which degradation in one side begins to endanger the other side or the shared relation. Thresholds help prevent vague concern from becoming either complacency or overreaction. They also make escalation and support triggers negotiable before stress arrives.

### Failure Propagation Map

`failure_propagation_map` — Traces how overload, withdrawal, opportunism, nonperformance, or shock in one node would propagate into the other. The map should include delayed effects and second-order consequences, not only immediate operational breakpoints.

### Stabilizing Buffer

`stabilizing_buffer` — Adds slack, reserves, time, redundancy, or capacity at the dependency interface so temporary stress does not immediately become relational failure. Buffers are not the archetype itself. They are a common stabilizer chosen after the dependency and failure pathway are understood.

### Fallback or Substitution Path

`fallback_or_substitution_path` — Specifies what either side can temporarily use, invoke, or switch to when the normal dependency cannot be satisfied. A fallback path keeps dependency from becoming captivity. It should preserve continuity without silently dissolving the relationship.

### Shared Monitoring Signal

`shared_monitoring_signal` — Gives the interdependent parties a common view of capacity, reliability, stress, obligations, and early degradation. Shared monitoring reduces surprise and blame. It is especially important when one side can see stress earlier than the other.

### Risk-Sharing Rule

`risk_sharing_rule` — Allocates foreseeable costs, reserves, disruptions, or recovery burdens so one side is not left carrying all dependency risk. The rule may use proportional sharing, role-based sharing, insurance-like pooling, or explicit compensation for standby capacity.

### Commitment and Service Guarantee

`commitment_and_service_guarantee` — Creates credible expectations about minimum support, response time, continuity, or non-abandonment under stress. The guarantee need not be legal; it can be operational, relational, technical, or reputational. What matters is that future support becomes credible enough to plan around.

### Escalation and Repair Protocol

`escalation_and_repair_protocol` — Defines how the parties intervene when the dependency starts to fail, including who is notified, what support is activated, and how repair is verified. Without a repair path, stabilization degrades into a static agreement that works only in normal conditions.

### Autonomy and Exit Guardrail

`autonomy_and_exit_guardrail` — Preserves enough independence, bargaining power, and graceful exit capacity that stabilization does not become coercive lock-in. A stabilized dependency should reduce fragility, not trap weaker parties in exploitative or unsafe relationships.

Optional components such as a joint contingency budget, role substitution plan, dependency stress test, shared learning cadence, and dependency power review become important when the dependency is expensive, safety-sensitive, asymmetric, or likely to evolve.

prose_common_mechanisms:
### Mutual Aid Agreement

`mutual_aid_agreement` (agreement) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Formalizes reciprocal support obligations for disruption, surge, shortage, or emergency conditions. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Bilateral Service-Level Guarantee

`bilateral_service_level_guarantee` (contract_or_operating_rule) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Specifies minimum service, response, or continuity commitments in both directions rather than only from vendor to client. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Shared Reserve Pool

`shared_reserve_pool` (resource_pool) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Maintains shared stock, money, capacity, or staffing that can be drawn down when either side’s dependency is stressed. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Co-Insurance or Risk-Pooling Arrangement

`co_insurance_or_risk_pooling_arrangement` (financial_or_governance_mechanism) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Spreads disruption costs across parties who benefit from the stable dependency, reducing incentives to shift risk outward. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Joint Contingency Plan

`joint_contingency_plan` (planning_protocol) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Predefines scenario-specific actions, authorities, communication paths, and fallback modes for dependency stress. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Reciprocal Support Pact

`reciprocal_support_pact` (relational_commitment) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Creates a standing expectation that each side will provide defined help when the other enters a vulnerable state. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Fallback Supply or Service Contract

`fallback_supply_or_service_contract` (substitution_mechanism) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Keeps a secondary path available so one party’s failure does not immediately cascade into the other. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Shared Monitoring Dashboard

`shared_monitoring_dashboard` (observability_artifact) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Displays agreed indicators of capacity, reliability, queue length, risk, incident status, and obligation fulfillment. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Cross-Training and Role Shadowing

`cross_training_and_role_shadowing` (capability_building_practice) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Builds partial substitutability so each side can understand, assist, or temporarily cover critical functions. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

### Escalation Ladder and Repair Review

`escalation_ladder_and_repair_review` (governance_process) implements the archetype by helping make reciprocal dependency reliable under stress. Defines levels of response, named owners, time limits, and post-incident review after dependency stress. It should be treated as an implementation choice, not as the archetype itself.

Mechanisms should be selected by the fragility mode. A shortage problem may need reserves; a credibility problem may need guarantees; an opportunism problem may need accountability and consequences; a propagation problem may need fallback and escalation design.

prose_failure_modes:
- **Stabilized exploitation:** A stronger party uses stabilization to preserve an unfair dependency. Mitigate with autonomy guardrails, fallback rights, and power review.
- **Hidden single point of reciprocal failure:** The dependency map misses a shared supplier, infrastructure layer, data source, or informal role. Mitigate with stress tests and second-order propagation mapping.
- **Buffer complacency:** Parties add slack and ignore the underlying instability. Mitigate by pairing buffers with review, accountability, and capacity improvement.
- **Unfunded stabilization promise:** Agreements are not backed by resources or authority. Mitigate by linking commitments to budgets, owners, and realistic service levels.
- **Correlated fallback failure:** Backup paths depend on the same conditions as the primary path. Mitigate by checking fallback independence.
- **Overcoupling through stabilization:** Shared processes become so dense that the relation grows more brittle. Mitigate with coupling calibration and decoupling where mutual dependence is not needed.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
- **Symbiotic Alignment:** Designs mutual reinforcement and shared value. Mutual Dependency Stabilization protects a necessary dependency from fragility and cascade risk.
- **Buffering:** Adds slack. This archetype may use buffers but also includes dependency mapping, commitments, monitoring, fallback, repair, and autonomy guardrails.
- **Failover:** Switches to an alternate path after failure. This archetype manages the reciprocal relation before, during, and after stress.
- **Bulkhead Isolation:** Blocks propagation through separation. This archetype preserves a valuable coupling while making it safer.
- **Dependency Exposure:** Reveals hidden dependencies. This archetype uses that exposure to install stabilizers.
- **Payoff Restructuring:** Changes incentives. This archetype focuses on continuity under reciprocal fragility, though it may use incentive-like commitments.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
- **Supply chains:** A buyer and supplier create shared forecasts, reserve inventory, emergency capacity commitments, and fallback sourcing for critical components.
- **Municipal emergency response:** Neighboring jurisdictions pool equipment and define mutual aid thresholds before overload occurs.
- **Software operations:** Interdependent service teams define shared health indicators, deprecation guarantees, incident escalation, and fallback modes.
- **Community care:** A hospital and home-care network coordinate capacity signals and contingency support to prevent overload from cascading between them.
- **Ecological management:** Restoration efforts protect both pollinator habitat and host plant availability because decline on either side destabilizes the relation.

prose_non_examples:
- A company negotiates a lower price from a supplier without stabilizing reciprocal continuity.
- A platform publishes an API standard but does not address mutual dependency health or failure propagation.
- A household keeps emergency batteries; this is preparedness, not reciprocal dependency stabilization.
- A dominant organization locks a weaker partner into exclusivity with no exit path; that may intensify dependency rather than stabilize it ethically.

prose_tradeoffs:
- **Stability versus flexibility:** Commitments and buffers improve continuity but can make adaptation slower.
- **Redundancy cost versus cascade risk:** Reserves and fallback paths cost money or attention, but they reduce the chance of relational collapse.
- **Trust-building versus verification burden:** Monitoring can increase confidence, but excessive verification can become surveillance or bureaucracy.
- **Mutual support versus moral hazard:** Guaranteed help can reduce fragility while also weakening incentives to maintain local capacity.
- **Dependency preservation versus autonomy:** Stabilizing a relation can preserve value but may entrench dependence unless exit guardrails remain real.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
- **Reciprocal Continuity** (`reciprocal_continuity`): The relation should continue through ordinary disruption without one side’s stress immediately disabling the other.
- **Non-Cascading Failure** (`non_cascading_failure`): Failure in one node should be slowed, absorbed, isolated, or rerouted before it becomes a wider relational collapse.
- **Visible Dependency Health** (`visible_dependency_health`): Critical signals about capacity, stress, reliability, obligations, and degradation must be observable by those who depend on them.
- **Fair Risk Distribution** (`fair_risk_distribution`): The costs of stabilizing the dependency should not be invisibly imposed on the weaker, less visible, or more replaceable participant.
- **Preserved Autonomy** (`preserved_autonomy`): Stabilization should not eliminate exit, bargaining power, fallback capacity, or independent safety.

The most important invariant is that stabilization must preserve legitimate reciprocal continuity without erasing autonomy. A dependency can be made safer without making either party captive.

prose_target_outcomes:
- **Lower Cascade Risk** (`lower_cascade_risk`): Disruptions in one side are less likely to propagate quickly or unexpectedly into the other.
- **Higher Relational Reliability** (`higher_relational_reliability`): Each party can plan around the dependency because minimum support, visibility, and fallback expectations are credible.
- **Faster Repair After Stress** (`faster_repair_after_stress`): When dependency stress occurs, the parties know how to escalate, coordinate, recover, and learn rather than renegotiate under pressure.
- **Reduced Opportunistic Withdrawal** (`reduced_opportunistic_withdrawal`): Commitments, shared risk, and visibility make sudden abandonment or cost shifting less attractive and easier to detect.
- **Improved Trust Without Blind Dependence** (`improved_trust_without_blind_dependence`): The relationship becomes more dependable while retaining enough fallback capacity to avoid coercive or brittle lock-in.

If the archetype works, the relation becomes more dependable without pretending that failure is impossible. The parties know what stress looks like, which stabilizers activate, who carries which risks, and how recovery proceeds.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
- **Dependency Criticality** (`dependency_criticality`): How severe is the consequence if one side cannot provide the function, resource, access, signal, or support the other relies on?
- **Coupling Tightness** (`coupling_tightness`): Should the parties remain tightly coupled for performance, or loosen coupling to reduce propagation of failure?
- **Buffer Depth** (`buffer_depth`): How much slack, inventory, time, redundancy, or standby capacity is worth carrying to prevent cascading instability?
- **Fallback Independence** (`fallback_independence`): How independent must fallback paths be so they are not impaired by the same shock that stresses the primary dependency?
- **Risk-Share Ratio** (`risk_share_ratio`): How should prevention, standby, disruption, and recovery costs be divided among parties that benefit differently from the stable relation?
- **Monitoring Cadence** (`monitoring_cadence`): How often should dependency health be checked, and which thresholds require immediate escalation rather than ordinary review?
- **Exit Reversibility** (`exit_reversibility`): Can either party reduce or end the dependency without catastrophic harm, and what transition path preserves continuity?

These parameters prevent over- and under-stabilization. Too little stabilization leaves the relation brittle; too much can create bureaucracy, moral hazard, or coercive dependence.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
Recognized variants include bilateral dependency stabilization, network mutual dependency stabilization, opportunism-resistant dependency stabilization, and ecological mutualism stabilization. Near names include reciprocal dependency stabilization, interdependency stabilization, fragile dependency stabilization, mutual dependency hardening, and co-dependency stabilization.

The draft is deliberately merge-sensitive with **Symbiotic Alignment**. If reviewers decide that fragility stabilization is not distinct enough from mutual reinforcement design, this archetype should collapse into Symbiotic Alignment as a recognized variant while preserving its stabilizer components.

Bilateral Dependency Stabilization

short_definition: Stabilize a two-party reciprocal dependency with explicit commitments, buffers, monitoring, and fallback rights.

distinctive_feature: The dependency is direct and bilateral, making obligations and thresholds relatively explicit.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can cover multi-party networks; this variant emphasizes two-sided continuity and negotiated obligations.

still_same_parent_because: The intervention still stabilizes reciprocal dependency under fragility rather than creating a different structural logic.

use_when: The relation is primarily between two parties or systems.

use_when: Each side can name what it needs from the other.

use_when: Failure on either side would materially harm the other.

example_domains:
supplier relationships
interdepartmental service dependencies
technical service integrations

domain: supply chain

example: A buyer and supplier share capacity signals and reserve commitments for shortage periods.

domain: software

example: A platform team and application team agree on deprecation windows and emergency support paths.

failure_modes: Over-formalizing obligations so adaptation becomes slow.

failure_modes: Ignoring power imbalance when negotiating guarantees.

Network Mutual Dependency Stabilization

short_definition: Stabilize reciprocal dependency across more than two parties where stress can propagate through a network.

distinctive_feature: The dependency web requires shared observability, pooled reserves, and network-level escalation rather than only bilateral commitments.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes any reciprocal dependency; this variant emphasizes many-node propagation and governance complexity.

still_same_parent_because: The core intervention remains stabilization of fragile interdependence under stress.

source_primes: coupling resilience

use_when: Several nodes rely on one another through shared capacity, standards, legitimacy, liquidity, or emergency support.

use_when: Failure propagation is indirect or multi-hop.

use_when: No single bilateral agreement is sufficient to stabilize the relation.

example_domains:
regional emergency response
platform ecosystems
community care networks

domain: public safety

example: A region coordinates shared emergency equipment and cross-jurisdiction response thresholds.

domain: health care

example: Hospitals and community providers coordinate dashboards and fallback placements.

failure_modes: Network governance becomes too diffuse for timely support.

failure_modes: Shared reserves are exhausted by correlated shocks.

short_definition: Stabilize a dependency by reducing the ability of either side to abandon, exploit, or shift costs during stress.

distinctive_feature: The key risk is strategic opportunism rather than simple outage or capacity shortage.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers many fragility modes; this variant centers credible commitment and anti-opportunism safeguards.

still_same_parent_because: It still protects a necessary reciprocal dependency from destabilizing stress.

source_primes: accountability coupling

use_when: The dependency fails because one side can gain by withholding support or moving risk onto the other.

use_when: Trust is not enough to make continuity credible.

use_when: Commitments, verification, and consequences are needed.

example_domains:
strategic partnerships
supply contracts
platform governance

domain: contracting

example: A critical provider posts a performance bond and agrees to step-in rights during nonperformance.

failure_modes: Overly punitive guarantees make cooperation brittle.

failure_modes: Verification costs exceed stabilization benefit.

Ecological Mutualism Stabilization

short_definition: Stabilize ecological mutual dependencies by protecting both sides of the relation and the conditions that connect them.

distinctive_feature: The mutual dependency is biological or ecological and often mediated by habitat, seasonality, or population thresholds.

distinct_from_parent: The parent is cross-domain; this variant uses ecological monitoring and habitat interventions.

still_same_parent_because: The structural logic remains reciprocal dependency stabilization under fragility.

source_primes: symbiosis resilience

use_when: Species, habitats, or ecological functions depend on each other.

use_when: A decline in one side threatens the other side’s reproduction, nutrition, protection, or habitat maintenance.

use_when: Intervention must preserve the relation rather than only one population.

example_domains:
pollinator systems
reef restoration
forest regeneration

domain: restoration ecology

example: A restoration project monitors both host plants and pollinators rather than treating either as independent.

failure_modes: Intervening on one species while ignoring the mediating habitat.

failure_modes: Mistaking correlation for mutual dependency.

near_names:
Reciprocal Dependency Stabilization
Interdependency Stabilization
Mutual Dependency Hardening
Reciprocal Failure Prevention
Co-Dependency Stabilization


Narrative Construction Audit

type: archetype

source: generated

batch: First Iteration/Batch 45

aliases:
Narrative Audit
Story Audit
Storyline Audit
Narrative Review

alias_records:
Narrative Audit
Story Audit
Storyline Audit
Narrative Review

slug: framing

slug: causality

slug: emphasis

slug: revisionism

slug: presentism

slug: anachronism

slug: historicism

components:
Selected Event
Omitted Event
Selection Rationale
Causal Sequence
Focal Actor
Narrative Theme
Alternative Narrative
Qualification or Revision
Audience or Use Context
Evidence Anchor
Marginalized Actor or Voice
Temporal Frame Note
Dissent or Uncertainty Note

mechanisms:
Narrative Audit Table
Selection / Omission Matrix
Causal Sequence Map
Evidence-to-Claim Matrix
Actor Role Map
Counter-Narrative Workshop
After-Action Story Review
Media Framing Analysis
Timeline Review
Narrative Red Team

essence_one_line: Audit how a story selects events, assigns causality, centers actors, creates themes, and omits alternatives.

compression_statement: When events, evidence, or experiences are organized into a coherent story, audit the narrative construction so selection, omission, emphasis, causal sequencing, focal actors, and alternative narratives are visible before the story becomes accepted memory or decision logic.

core_intuition: A narrative is not a neutral container for facts. It is a structured interpretation that makes some things central, others peripheral, some links causal, and some outcomes natural. The audit works by making those construction choices explicit enough to test.

canonical_formula: Narrative = selected material + omitted material + sequence + focalization + theme + implied causality; Audit = expose each choice, compare alternatives, and revise or qualify the account.

structural_problem: A coherent story feels self-evident because it hides the choices that made it coherent: which events were selected, which were omitted, how causes were linked, which actors were centered, and what theme or moral was imposed.

description: A single narrative is about to become official memory, public explanation, strategic doctrine, training material, or policy justification.

description: Credible events, voices, harms, benefits, or alternative explanations appear to be outside the story even though they could change interpretation.

description: The story moves from one event to another as if temporal sequence, motive, causality, and responsibility are already settled.

description: The narrative assigns heroism, blame, expertise, passivity, or inevitability through focal actors rather than careful analysis.

description: The story will be reused to teach a lesson, justify a choice, preserve institutional memory, or influence public interpretation.

symptoms: the same events support more than one plausible account

symptoms: the story has a strong moral or lesson before alternatives are considered

symptoms: chronology is being treated as proof of causality

symptoms: affected actors appear only as background or examples

symptoms: the account becomes shorter and more confident each time it is retold

symptoms: counterexamples are described as exceptions without checking whether they weaken the theme

symptoms: new evidence is treated as an inconvenience rather than a possible reason to revise the story

root_tension: Narratives are necessary because people need compressed, memorable accounts for learning and action; narratives are dangerous because compression can hide selection, causality, power, omission, and uncertainty.

why_not: If the main issue is whether sources are primary, secondary, biased, derivative, or corroborated, use Source Provenance Triangulation first.

why_not: If the main issue is how to divide time into periods, use Periodization Frame Design rather than this audit.

why_not: If the main issue is recursive interpretation between local details and a whole account, use Hermeneutic Iteration.

why_not: If the story is already substantively sound and only needs clearer wording, this archetype adds unnecessary audit overhead.

why_not: If the narrative is knowingly fictional, symbolic, or motivational and not being used as evidence, memory, explanation, or decision logic, the audit may not be necessary.

structural_intervention: Expose and evaluate the narrative construction choices behind an account, then revise, qualify, or supplement the story so it remains useful without hiding omissions, causal uncertainty, focalization effects, or credible alternatives.

logic: Write the narrative as actually being used: main events, causal claims, focal actors, lesson, and implied audience.

logic: List selected events and plausible omitted events so the story is no longer mistaken for the whole record.

logic: Mark which links are chronological, causal, interpretive, speculative, rhetorical, or unresolved.

logic: Identify who the story centers, who it backgrounds, what theme it compresses toward, and what that theme makes hard to notice.

logic: Construct at least one credible alternative narrative or qualification using the same and additional evidence.

logic: Adjust the story, add caveats, preserve uncertainty, include omitted material, or document why the dominant story remains adequate.

description: Audit before a story becomes official memory, onboarding material, policy rationale, incident lesson, or public explanation.

description: Treat omissions as audit triggers, not automatic failures; every usable story has scope limits.

description: A timeline can support causal analysis but cannot by itself prove that one event caused another.

description: Alternative narratives must be plausible under available evidence and declared assumptions, not arbitrary contrarian stories.

description: The end product should be more honest and bounded, not so exhaustive that it stops functioning as a story.

Selected Material Visible

statement: The audience can see what material the story includes and why.

Omission Boundary Visible

statement: Important excluded material, dissent, and counterexamples are identified or explicitly ruled out of scope.

Causal Claims Labeled

statement: The story distinguishes established causal links from chronology, inference, speculation, and rhetoric.

Focalization Named

statement: The story’s centered and backgrounded actors are visible enough to test attribution effects.

Alternative Story Possible

statement: At least one credible alternative or qualification can be considered before closure.

Compression Remains Useful

statement: The revised narrative remains usable for communication, learning, memory, or decision-making.

More Honest Story

description: The final account is more bounded, transparent, and proportional to its evidence.

Reduced False Inevitability

description: The story no longer makes outcomes feel natural or unavoidable unless the evidence supports that claim.

Better Attribution

description: Credit, blame, agency, and structural conditions are less distorted by focal actor choices.

Preserved Learning Value

description: The account remains memorable and usable while carrying enough qualification to avoid repeated error.

Improved Narrative Plurality

description: Credible alternatives are preserved when they materially affect interpretation or action.

prose_essence:
Narrative Construction Audit is for moments when a story has become convincing enough to guide memory, blame, strategy, learning, or public interpretation. It treats the story as a constructed account rather than a transparent mirror of events. The goal is not to eliminate narrative; people need stories to remember, teach, decide, and coordinate. The goal is to make the construction choices visible enough to test.

The archetype asks: What did the story select? What did it omit? What causal sequence does it imply? Which actors does it center or background? What theme or lesson does it compress toward? What credible alternative story would become possible if different material, sequence, or focal actors were included?

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when an account is about to become official, memorable, or consequential. That includes incident postmortems, strategic explanations, institutional origin stories, public narratives, policy retrospectives, media accounts, and historical interpretations.

It is especially useful when a story feels too smooth. Smoothness is not proof of falsehood, but it often means the story has compressed away uncertainty, alternative causes, excluded actors, or inconvenient counterexamples. The audit should happen before the story hardens into doctrine, training, policy rationale, collective memory, or reputational judgment.

Do not use it as a generic accusation that a story is “biased.” A story can be compressed and still be fair. The audit only matters when construction choices materially change explanation, responsibility, legitimacy, or future action.

prose_structural_problem:
The structural problem is hidden construction. Events do not automatically arrive as a story. Someone selects a beginning, middle, and end; chooses protagonists and background actors; implies causal links; highlights some data; omits other material; and attaches a lesson or theme. Once the story is coherent, these choices can disappear from view.

That disappearance matters because stories travel better than raw records. They are easier to remember and easier to reuse. A simplified story can therefore become the basis for future decisions even when its omissions or causal shortcuts would not survive inspection.

A postmortem might become “one person made a bad deploy.” A strategy review might become “the market was not ready.” A public account might become “this event proves the trend.” A historical account might become “this reform changed everything.” Each may contain truth, but each may also hide selection, omitted context, causal uncertainty, or actor focalization.

prose_intervention_logic:
The intervention is to expose the story’s construction choices, test them, and then revise or bound the account. The audit should not destroy the story by replacing it with an exhaustive archive. It should make the story more honest while preserving enough compression for memory and action.

A practical sequence is:

1. State the story as it is being used: main events, causal claims, focal actors, theme, and intended use.
2. Separate the story from the world by listing selected events and plausible omitted events.
3. Map causal sequence, distinguishing chronology from causality and evidence from inference.
4. Audit focal actors and themes: who is centered, who is backgrounded, and what moral or lesson dominates.
5. Compare at least one credible alternative narrative or qualification.
6. Revise, qualify, or preserve the story with explicit scope, uncertainty, and support labels.

The resulting account can still be memorable. It should simply no longer pretend that its construction choices were inevitable or invisible.

prose_key_components:
### Selected Event

The selected event is the material the story places inside the frame: the moment, datum, quote, decision, failure, success, or turning point that becomes salient. Selection is necessary, but the audit asks whether the selected material is doing more explanatory work than it can support.

### Omitted Event

The omitted event is plausible material left outside the story. It might be a counterexample, affected voice, background condition, prior warning, failed alternative, or inconvenient consequence. An omission is not automatically a flaw; the audit checks whether the omission changes interpretation.

### Selection Rationale

The selection rationale explains why the story includes some material and excludes other material. Without it, inherited habit, audience preference, authority, or convenience can masquerade as neutral scope.

### Causal Sequence

The causal sequence shows how the story links events into explanation. It marks what merely happened before, what plausibly caused something else, what is speculative, and what remains unresolved. This prevents a timeline from doing unearned causal work.

### Focal Actor

The focal actor is the person, group, team, institution, or system the story makes central. Focalization shapes credit, blame, sympathy, and agency. The audit checks whether centering one actor hides structural conditions, collective work, affected parties, or background constraints.

### Narrative Theme

The narrative theme is the story’s compressed lesson, moral, or pattern. Themes make stories memorable, but they also guide attention. The audit asks what the theme helps the audience see and what it makes harder to notice.

### Alternative Narrative

An alternative narrative is a credible rival account over the same or expanded evidence base. It is not arbitrary contrarianism. Its job is to test whether the dominant story depends too strongly on one selection boundary, causal order, focal actor, or theme.

### Qualification or Revision

The audit should end with a change: a revised story, narrower claim, added caveat, confidence label, preserved dissent, or reasoned decision to keep the original account. Without this component, the audit remains critique rather than intervention.

prose_common_mechanisms:
### Narrative Audit Table

A narrative audit table lists selected events, omissions, causal links, focal actors, themes, alternatives, and revisions. It is useful when the audit needs to be inspectable by others.

### Selection / Omission Matrix

This mechanism places included and excluded material side by side. It is especially useful when the story may be true but misleading because of what it leaves out.

### Causal Sequence Map

A causal sequence map turns the story’s implied “because” chain into visible links. It helps reviewers distinguish chronology, evidence, inference, speculation, and rhetoric.

### Evidence-to-Claim Matrix

This matrix connects narrative claims to evidence. It is not a replacement for source provenance work, but it helps prevent a powerful story from outrunning its support.

### Actor Role Map

An actor role map shows who the story frames as agent, victim, obstacle, beneficiary, expert, audience, or background. It is a practical way to detect hidden credit and blame assignments.

### Counter-Narrative Workshop

A counter-narrative workshop generates credible rival stories under evidence constraints. It works best when participants are asked to produce stronger interpretations, not merely oppositional ones.

### After-Action Story Review

This procedure audits the story told after an incident, crisis, project, or campaign before it becomes the official lesson. It is common in organizational learning and incident response.

### Media Framing Analysis

Media framing analysis compares public accounts for source selection, headline implication, causal emphasis, focal actors, and omitted context. It implements the archetype in public communication settings.

### Timeline Review

Timeline review is useful when sequence matters. It should not be confused with the archetype. A timeline only becomes part of narrative construction audit when it tests causal sequence, selected period, omitted interval, or turning-point claims.

### Narrative Red Team

A narrative red team stress-tests the dominant story for omissions, unsupported causality, misleading focal actors, overclean themes, and false inevitability. It is appropriate when the story will be high-stakes or hard to revise later.

prose_failure_modes:
One failure mode is audit-as-bias-accusation. Reviewers may treat any selection choice as proof of bad faith. The mitigation is to require a specific material effect: what does the choice change about causality, attribution, legitimacy, or action?

A second failure mode is endless deconstruction. The audit can keep finding more omissions until no story can be told. The mitigation is to use materiality, audience, and use context thresholds.

A third failure mode is false balance. The existence of another story does not make it equally supported. The mitigation is to attach confidence labels and evidence support to each narrative.

A fourth failure mode is narrative flattening. Fear of distortion can produce a list of factors with no memorable lesson. The mitigation is to revise the story, not abolish story form.

A fifth failure mode is defensive official memory. Institutions may accept only changes that protect reputation. The mitigation is to preserve rejected alternatives, dissent, and decision authority in the record.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
Narrative Construction Audit is distinct from Source Provenance Triangulation. Source provenance asks whether evidence is firsthand, derivative, biased, or corroborated. Narrative audit asks what the story does with evidence once evidence is available.

It is distinct from Periodization Frame Design. Periodization designs temporal boundaries and labels. Narrative audit checks the story constructed inside or across those boundaries.

It is distinct from Hermeneutic Iteration. Hermeneutic Iteration moves recursively between parts and whole to stabilize interpretation. Narrative audit specifically inspects story-making choices: selection, omission, causal sequence, focal actors, theme, and alternatives.

It is distinct from Collective Memory Curation. Collective Memory Curation governs what a group preserves and transmits. Narrative audit can feed that process by improving a particular story before it becomes memory.

It is distinct from Grand Narrative Decomposition. Grand Narrative Decomposition targets sweeping totalizing stories, teleology, excluded cases, and macro-scale explanatory overreach. Narrative Construction Audit applies at any scale.

It is distinct from Agency / Structure Attribution Balance. Narrative audit can reveal actor focalization, but attribution balance requires its own explanation of individual agency, structural enablers, constraints, and collective contribution.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
In incident review, a story that blames one deploy can be audited for omitted tooling, review policy, staffing, alerting, and ownership conditions. The revised story may still include the deploy as trigger, but no longer treats it as the complete cause.

In strategy, a company might explain failure as “the market was not ready.” The audit checks omitted pricing, channel fit, support burden, competitor timing, and product assumptions. The revised story may become more actionable.

In media literacy, two accounts of the same event can be compared for headline implication, source selection, causal sequence, focal actors, and omitted context.

In institutional memory, a founder story about speed can be audited before onboarding. The organization may preserve the inspiring lesson while adding hidden maintenance costs, excluded contributors, and conditions under which speed was harmful.

In history, a story about reform, revolution, decline, or progress can be audited for chosen turning points, excluded cases, causal claims, centered actors, teleology, and alternative interpretations.

prose_non_examples:
A raw timeline is not Narrative Construction Audit. It becomes relevant only when the timeline is used to test selected events, omitted intervals, causal links, or turning-point claims.

A historical essay is not the archetype. It may be the artifact being audited.

A source list is not the archetype. It supports evidence work and may feed the audit, but the narrative audit examines construction choices in the account.

A public-relations rewrite is not the archetype. Making a story sound better without exposing construction choices is not an audit.

A brainstorm of arbitrary alternative stories is not the archetype. Alternatives must be credible and evidence-constrained.

prose_tradeoffs:
The main tradeoff is transparency versus memorability. A cleaner story travels farther, but a more qualified story is often more trustworthy.

Another tradeoff is plurality versus decisiveness. Comparing alternatives improves robustness, but too many alternatives can delay needed action.

There is also a trust tradeoff. Auditing a cherished or official story may feel like an attack. The audit should therefore be framed as a construction review, not an accusation that every narrative choice is manipulative.

Finally, there is a scope tradeoff. Every story must omit something. The audit must distinguish legitimate compression from distortion.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
Preserve visible selection. The audience should know what the story includes and why.

Preserve visible omission boundaries. The audience should know what was excluded, what remains uncertain, and what might change interpretation.

Preserve causal labeling. Chronology, causality, inference, and speculation should not collapse into one smooth storyline.

Preserve focalization awareness. Centered and backgrounded actors should be visible enough to test how the story assigns responsibility and agency.

Preserve evidence-constrained alternatives. Alternative narratives should be plausible under the available record, not invented for rhetorical balance.

Preserve usable compression. The point is not to replace every story with an archive. The final account should remain communicable, memorable, and useful.

prose_target_outcomes:
A successful Narrative Construction Audit produces a story that is more transparent, better bounded, and less overconfident. It reduces false inevitability, weakens unsupported blame or credit, and prevents omitted evidence from silently shaping memory.

It also improves learning. When stories become organizational or public memory, their hidden omissions become future errors. A better story can still teach a lesson, but the lesson is less likely to be the wrong one.

The archetype also supports legitimate disagreement. Instead of pretending there is only one possible account, it can preserve qualified alternatives and confidence levels when evidence does not justify closure.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
The first tuning dimension is stakes. A casual team recap may need a lightweight story audit; a public report, safety review, policy justification, or institutional origin story needs stronger evidence anchoring, dissent preservation, and review.

The second dimension is narrative scope. A narrow story can legitimately omit more material than a broad explanatory story. The wider the claim, the more aggressively omissions and alternatives should be checked.

The third dimension is causal strength. If the story only says “this happened, then that happened,” the causal burden is lower. If it says “this caused that,” “this proves the lesson,” or “this was inevitable,” the audit burden rises.

The fourth dimension is actor focalization. Stories that assign credit, blame, heroism, villainy, or passivity need stronger actor-role review than stories that simply organize events.

The fifth dimension is revision tolerance. Some contexts can keep multiple stories open; others need a decision. The audit should preserve ambiguity where it matters while still producing a usable account.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
Common near names include narrative audit, story audit, storyline audit, and narrative review. These names should point to the same parent when the work is to expose and test story construction choices.

Selection / Omission Audit focuses on what the story includes and excludes. Causal Sequence Audit focuses on implied cause and sequence. Actor Focalization Audit focuses on who the story centers or backgrounds. Counter-Narrative Comparison tests a dominant account against credible rivals.

Institutional Memory Story Audit applies the archetype to organizational lore, incident lessons, founder stories, and inherited doctrine. Media Framing Narrative Audit applies it to public accounts and communication artifacts.

Several roadmap candidates are held as merge-review variants under this family anchor: continuity/rupture story audit, temporal viewpoint story audit, revision trigger story audit, determinism/contingency story audit, presentism story guardrail, and anachronism story check. These should not be drafted separately unless human review confirms standalone boundaries.

Narrative maps, timelines, documentaries, exhibits, biographies, and historical essays are mechanisms or artifacts unless they are being used to implement the audit.

Selection / Omission Audit

variant_type: subtype

short_definition: Focuses the narrative audit on which events, voices, data points, time spans, or causes were included, excluded, foregrounded, or minimized.

distinctive_feature: The audit centers the inclusion boundary of the story rather than the whole narrative structure.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits selection, omission, causality, actor focalization, theme, and alternatives together; this variant emphasizes the selection boundary.

still_same_parent_because: Changing selection and omission changes the constructed story, so it remains a subtype of narrative construction auditing.

use_when: the story feels coherent but depends on a narrow evidence sample

use_when: important actors, harms, failures, or tradeoffs may have been left outside the account

use_when: the narrative may be true as far as it goes but misleading because of what it omits

Selected Event

role: The event or datum placed inside the story.

Omitted Event

role: The plausible event, datum, voice, or counterexample excluded from the story.

Selection Rationale

role: The stated or inferred reason for inclusion and exclusion choices.

Selection / Omission Matrix

role: Makes included and excluded material visible side by side.

Counterexample Inventory

role: Collects cases that might weaken or qualify the story.

domain: Incident review

example: Checking whether the postmortem story includes quiet coordination work as well as visible failures.

domain: Strategy

example: Auditing a market-entry story for ignored customer segments or contrary trend data.

failure_modes: turning the audit into a demand that every possible detail be included

failure_modes: treating omissions as bad faith without distinguishing legitimate scope limits from distortion

Causal Sequence Audit

short_definition: Audits the causal chain implied by a story: what is presented as cause, consequence, background condition, accident, turning point, or inevitability.

distinctive_feature: The variant stresses causal linkage and narrative sequencing rather than selection alone.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes causal sequencing as one component; this variant makes causal order the primary audit target.

still_same_parent_because: Causal sequence is one of the main construction choices that makes a set of events into a narrative.

use_when: a story persuades mainly through sequence, “therefore,” or “because” links

use_when: temporal order is being treated as causal order

use_when: a postmortem, history, or strategy narrative assigns blame or credit through a simplified chain

Causal Sequence

role: The explicit or implied cause-effect path in the narrative.

Causal Link Label

role: Marks whether a link is evidenced, inferred, speculative, or rhetorical.

Alternative Narrative

role: A different causal ordering or explanation to compare against the main story.

Causal Sequence Map

role: Displays the story’s causal path and weak links.

Evidence-to-Claim Matrix

role: Connects narrative causal claims to supporting and contrary evidence.

domain: Postmortem

example: Separating a true timestamp sequence from the causal story that the first visible error caused the outage.

domain: Policy review

example: Testing whether a policy narrative treats correlation after implementation as proof of policy effect.

failure_modes: requiring impossible certainty before accepting any causal story

failure_modes: overcorrecting into a flat list of factors that no longer explains sequence or responsibility

Actor Focalization Audit

short_definition: Audits which actors the narrative centers, marginalizes, turns into heroes or villains, treats as background, or removes from agency.

distinctive_feature: The audit centers focalization: who the story lets the audience see as active, passive, responsible, exceptional, or irrelevant.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits actor centering among other narrative choices; this variant isolates actor focalization and agency visibility.

still_same_parent_because: Actor focus is a construction choice that changes what the narrative explains and what actions it legitimizes.

use_when: the story depends on heroic, villainous, or passive actor roles

use_when: credit and blame may be assigned through narrative focus rather than careful attribution

use_when: collective, structural, or background contributions are invisible in the account

Focal Actor

role: The person, team, institution, or group centered by the story.

Marginalized Actor

role: An actor affected by or contributing to the events but pushed outside the main account.

Agency Assignment

role: The story’s implied allocation of initiative, responsibility, or power.

Actor Role Map

role: Shows who is framed as agent, victim, obstacle, audience, beneficiary, or background.

Credit / Blame Audit

role: Checks whether narrative focus distorts attribution.

domain: Innovation history

example: Auditing whether a founder story erases teams, infrastructure, market timing, or prior art.

domain: Organizational learning

example: Checking whether an incident story over-centers one operator while hiding policy and tooling conditions.

failure_modes: treating all actor-centered accounts as false rather than testing focalization effects

failure_modes: flattening personal responsibility into structure-only explanation

Counter-Narrative Comparison Variant

short_definition: Compares the dominant story with one or more credible alternative stories to reveal selection, emphasis, omitted causal links, and suppressed perspectives.

distinctive_feature: The audit works by structured comparison among narratives rather than only by inspecting the main narrative internally.

distinct_from_parent: The parent may include an alternative narrative component; this variant makes comparison the main method.

still_same_parent_because: The comparison still reveals how narratives are constructed from selection, omission, causality, and theme.

use_when: a single narrative has become authoritative too quickly

use_when: stakeholders disagree because they are using different plausible stories

use_when: a review needs to separate evidence-backed alternatives from rhetorical counter-stories

Alternative Narrative

role: A credible rival story against which the main narrative is tested.

Comparison Basis

role: The shared events, evidence, or stakes used to compare stories fairly.

Qualification or Revision

role: The resulting change to the dominant story.

Counter-Narrative Workshop

role: Generates and stress-tests credible alternative narratives.

Parallel Storyboard

role: Places multiple narratives side by side over the same evidence base.

example: Comparing “we lost because competitors copied us” against “we lost because our channel assumptions changed.”

domain: History

example: Comparing a state-centered account with a social-movement account over the same events.

failure_modes: creating false balance between a supported narrative and a fringe alternative

failure_modes: using alternatives as a creativity exercise without evidence constraints

Institutional Memory Story Audit

short_definition: Applies narrative construction audit to organization-level stories about incidents, wins, failures, founders, reforms, or inherited practices.

distinctive_feature: The story has operational consequences because it becomes memory, doctrine, onboarding lore, or decision precedent.

distinct_from_parent: The parent is domain-general; this variant specializes the audit for organizational memory and learning systems.

still_same_parent_because: The intervention still exposes selected events, omitted events, causal sequence, focal actors, themes, and alternatives.

use_when: an organization repeats a simplified lesson from the past

use_when: a founder, crisis, turnaround, or failure story governs current decisions

use_when: institutional memory may preserve confidence while losing complexity and dissent

Narrative Theme

role: The lesson or moral carried by the institutional story.

Memory Use Context

role: The decision, training, ritual, or governance context where the story is reused.

Dissent or Uncertainty Note

role: Preserves disagreement and ambiguity before the story becomes doctrine.

After-Action Story Review

role: Audits the story told after an event before lessons are institutionalized.

Institutional Memory Review

role: Checks whether inherited stories still fit evidence and current use.

example: Revising an old “move fast saved us” story after omitted coordination costs are surfaced.

domain: Incident response

example: Auditing a past outage lesson before applying it to a different architecture.

failure_modes: rewriting institutional memory to fit current leadership preferences

failure_modes: preserving so much complexity that no usable lesson remains

Media Framing Narrative Audit

short_definition: Applies the audit to public or media stories by examining headline framing, source selection, causal emphasis, image choice, chronology, and omitted context.

distinctive_feature: The variant treats public communication artifacts as narrative construction surfaces.

distinct_from_parent: The parent is broader than media; this variant focuses on communicative framing choices in public accounts.

still_same_parent_because: It still audits selection, omission, causal ordering, focal actors, theme, and alternatives.

source_primes: framing narrative_construction emphasis

use_when: public accounts make one interpretation feel obvious through framing and emphasis

use_when: media narratives differ over the same event set

use_when: readers need to separate reported facts from story construction choices

Selected Event

role: The event or detail highlighted in coverage.

Narrative Theme

role: The story line or implied interpretation created by framing choices.

Omitted Context

role: Background information needed to evaluate the story.

Media Framing Analysis

role: Compares framing choices across public accounts.

Headline-to-Body Claim Check

role: Checks whether the headline story overstates the underlying evidence.

domain: Media literacy

example: Comparing how two outlets make the same policy event into different causal stories through source and headline choices.

domain: Public communication

example: Auditing whether a campaign story omits credible counterevidence.

failure_modes: reducing all media analysis to bias accusation

failure_modes: ignoring factual accuracy because narrative framing is the visible concern

Continuity / Rupture Story Audit

short_definition: Audits stories that frame a change as revolutionary rupture, seamless continuity, gradual transition, or rebranding without sufficient support.

distinctive_feature: It specifically tests the temporal change claim embedded in the narrative.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits all construction choices; this variant focuses on the continuity-versus-rupture storyline.

still_same_parent_because: In the current reconciliation controls, continuity/rupture diagnosis is held for merge review under the narrative family anchor.

use_when: the story’s force depends on “everything changed” or “nothing really changed”

use_when: a change narrative may hide legacy effects, gradual transitions, or genuine breaks

use_when: human review has not yet decided whether continuity/rupture should be a full archetype

Change Claim

role: Claim that a rupture, continuity, or transition occurred.

Continuity Marker

role: Evidence of persistence across the claimed boundary.

Rupture Evidence

role: Evidence that a genuine break occurred.

Rupture Claim Review

role: Tests claims of sharp change against continuity and legacy evidence.

Before/After Story Audit

role: Checks whether a before/after narrative overstates discontinuity.

domain: Organizational change

example: Testing whether a “new culture” story is supported by decision, incentive, and staffing changes.

failure_modes: collapsing all change analysis into narrative framing

failure_modes: missing genuine structural discontinuity because the parent audit is too broad

Temporal Viewpoint Story Audit

short_definition: Audits whether a story relies on a current-state snapshot, a temporal trajectory, or a confusion between the two.

distinctive_feature: It checks the time viewpoint through which a story is made persuasive.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits narrative structure generally; this variant focuses on snapshot-versus-trajectory construction.

still_same_parent_because: The current reconciliation sequence holds the standalone synchronic/diachronic candidate under the narrative family anchor.

use_when: a story treats a snapshot as if it explains the trajectory

use_when: a timeline hides the structure visible in the current state

use_when: synchronic/diachronic dual analysis remains under merge review rather than drafting

Synchronic Snapshot

role: The current-state view used by the story.

Diachronic Timeline

role: The temporal development used or ignored by the story.

Temporal Claim Boundary

role: Clarifies what the story can and cannot infer from snapshot or trajectory.

Snapshot / Trajectory Comparison

role: Compares state interpretation with temporal development.

domain: Policy evaluation

example: Checking whether a “policy is working” story uses one favorable snapshot while ignoring the longer trend.

failure_modes: turning temporal viewpoint into a diagramming exercise without narrative consequences

Revision Trigger Story Audit

short_definition: Checks whether new evidence, excluded perspectives, or changed interpretive frames are strong enough to revise an established story.

distinctive_feature: It adds revision-threshold governance to the narrative audit.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can revise or qualify a story; this variant focuses on when revision is warranted.

still_same_parent_because: The triggering concern is whether a narrative should change in response to evidence or perspective.

use_when: a canonical story persists despite credible new information

use_when: a community or organization needs disciplined rules for amending an inherited account

use_when: revision_trigger_review remains under merge review rather than being drafted

Established Account

role: The current authoritative story.

New Evidence or Perspective

role: Information or viewpoint that challenges the story.

Revision Threshold

role: Criterion for updating, qualifying, or preserving the story.

Revision Trigger Checklist

role: Evaluates whether new material warrants narrative revision.

domain: Institutional memory

example: Revising a founding story when archival material and excluded team accounts change the causal lesson.

failure_modes: revision for novelty rather than warranted update

failure_modes: protecting authority by setting revision thresholds impossibly high

Determinism / Contingency Story Audit

short_definition: Audits whether a story makes outcomes seem inevitable, accidental, or overdetermined without preserving constrained alternatives and contingent choices.

distinctive_feature: The audit focuses on the story’s implied openness or inevitability.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits general narrative construction; this variant checks determinism and contingency specifically.

still_same_parent_because: The inevitability claim is usually carried by selection, causal sequencing, omitted alternatives, and theme.

use_when: the narrative says the outcome was bound to happen

use_when: the narrative says the outcome was just a fluke

use_when: determinism_contingency_balance is held for merge review rather than drafting

Inevitability Claim

role: The narrative’s claim that events had to unfold as they did.

Contingent Event

role: A decision, accident, timing factor, or alternative path that could have mattered.

Alternative Narrative

role: A plausible story preserving different degrees of openness.

Alternative Path Review

role: Tests whether the story suppresses plausible paths not taken.

example_domains: history strategy postmortems policy

example: Auditing a “we were destined to lose” story for overlooked decision points and market contingencies.

failure_modes: collapsing structural constraints into arbitrary storytelling

Presentism Story Guardrail

short_definition: Checks whether a story silently imports present-day assumptions, categories, values, or option sets into an account of earlier actors or institutions.

distinctive_feature: It treats presentism as a narrative distortion risk rather than a full contextualization intervention.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits story construction; this variant targets one temporal-context bias in stories.

still_same_parent_because: The presentist distortion usually appears through focal actors, theme, category choice, and omitted period context.

use_when: the story depends on modern categories that past actors may not have used

use_when: moral evaluation and contextual explanation are being confused

use_when: presentism_guardrail remains under merge review rather than drafting

Modern Assumption

role: A current category, value, option, or knowledge claim imported into the story.

Period Context Check

role: A check against the knowledge, norms, and constraints of the relevant time.

Evaluation / Explanation Boundary

role: Separates moral judgment from contextual interpretation.

Presentism Check

role: Screens the narrative for modern-frame distortion.

example_domains: history institutional_reviews ethics education

domain: Institutional review

example: Checking whether a retrospective story assumes past teams had today’s monitoring tools and norms.

failure_modes: using moral urgency to erase period-specific interpretation

Anachronism Story Check

short_definition: Detects story elements that depend on concepts, objects, institutions, technologies, or expectations placed in the wrong period.

distinctive_feature: The audit focuses on time-validity of narrative elements.

distinct_from_parent: The parent audits the whole story; this variant is a chronological/contextual validity check inside that audit.

still_same_parent_because: Anachronism matters here because it distorts narrative meaning, causality, actor options, or evaluation.

use_when: a narrative uses later language or categories to explain earlier events

use_when: a chronological mismatch changes the interpretation or causal story

use_when: anachronism_detection remains under merge review rather than drafting

Time-Mismatched Element

role: A concept, tool, institution, label, or expectation that may not belong in the period.

Chronology Check

role: Verification of whether the element was available or meaningful at the relevant time.

Period-Appropriate Concept

role: Replacement term or interpretation that better fits the time context.

Period Vocabulary Audit

role: Checks whether narrative language belongs to the period being interpreted.

Chronology Check

role: Verifies temporal availability before accepting the story element.

domain: Product retrospective

example: Avoiding a story that blames an old decision for ignoring a technology that was not available then.

failure_modes: reducing the audit to trivia-level date checking

failure_modes: ignoring anachronism because the story is rhetorically useful

near_names:
Narrative Audit
Story Audit
Storyline Audit
Narrative Review
Narrative Map
Timeline Review
Media Framing Analysis
After-Action Story Review
Counter-Narrative Comparison


name: Narrative Transportation Persuasion Design

batch: Batch 08

canonical_family: Language, Meaning & Communication

aliases: Transportation-Based Belief Shift Design

alias_records: Transportation-Based Belief Shift Design

slug: narrative

slug: sensemaking

slug: attention

slug: heuristic

slug: trust

slug: priming

slug: identification

slug: schema

slug: representation

slug: feedback

slug: legitimacy

slug: consent

slug: normativity

slug: agency

slug: transparency

slug: reactance

components:
Audience Prior-State Map
Persuasive Payload Statement
Storyworld Transportation Pathway
Identification Anchor
Causal Consequence Arc
Counterargument Integration Point
Emotional Intensity Boundary
Truth and Evidence Trace
Post-Story Reflection Bridge
Agency-Preserving Action Link
Interpretation Feedback Loop
Ethical Use Boundary
Representative Story Panel
Counter-Narrative Comparison Set
Character Arc Alignment Map
Transportation Strength Metric
Vivid Case Generalization Guard
Story Source Disclosure Note

mechanisms:
Transportive Storyboard
Audience Counterargument Map
Character Identification Matrix
Case Story Library
Narrative Ethics Review
Post-Story Reflection Prompt
Story A/B Interpretation Test
Source and Composite Disclosure Card
Counter-Narrative Red Team
Action-Link Landing Path

essence_one_line: Use a storyworld to let the audience experience the target belief or attitude as lived consequence rather than as a bare proposition, then make the resulting shift ethically inspectable.

compression_statement: Narrative Transportation Persuasion Design is the solution pattern for situations where direct claims, statistics, rules, or arguments are unlikely to change attitudes because the audience will counterargue, discount, or fail to imagine the lived consequences. The intervention encodes the intended belief shift as a narrative payload; embeds it in characters, stakes, causal sequences, and emotional arcs; supports audience transportation and identification; then converts post-story salience into reflection, choice, or action without hiding uncertainty or overriding agency.

core_intuition: A story can make an audience temporarily inhabit a world rather than merely inspect a claim. That lowers defensive counterargument and makes consequences feel concrete. The power of the archetype is also its risk: it must include truth boundaries, agency safeguards, and post-narrative scrutiny so persuasion does not become covert manipulation.

canonical_formula: audience_prior_state + storyworld_transportation + character_identification + causal_consequence_arc + ethical_reflection_boundary -> belief_or_attitude_shift_with_agency_preserved

structural_problem: A group must communicate a belief, attitude, risk, norm, value, or intended action, but direct assertion or argument is too abstract, too contested, too emotionally inert, or too easy to counterargue. The audience does not yet feel the practical consequence of the claim, so the message remains a proposition rather than an experienced possibility.

trigger_conditions: The audience needs to grasp lived consequences that are hard to feel from facts, rules, or statistics alone.

trigger_conditions: Direct advocacy is producing reactance, motivated reasoning, premature counterargument, or indifference.

trigger_conditions: The desired shift involves empathy, salience, identity, norm perception, risk appraisal, or imagined futures.

trigger_conditions: The message requires a sequence of cause and effect that is easier to understand through agents and stakes.

trigger_conditions: A training, change, health, civic, or safety goal depends on people imagining themselves inside the situation.

trigger_conditions: The communicator can ethically disclose intent, avoid fabrication, and preserve audience interpretive agency.

symptoms: Correct claims are remembered as information but do not alter choices, concern, priority, or behavior.

symptoms: Audiences argue with the message before they have imagined the situation it describes.

symptoms: A risk, injustice, technical consequence, or future scenario remains abstract until people hear a concrete case.

symptoms: Examples persuade more strongly than the general rule, but the examples are ad hoc rather than designed.

symptoms: Different audiences interpret the same factual briefing through incompatible identity frames or moral scripts.

symptoms: A change campaign has slogans and evidence but lacks a memorable sequence of agents, stakes, tension, and outcome.

symptoms: Persuasive material produces short-term emotion but no stable post-story reflection, decision, or action path.

root_tension: Direct claims invite evaluation from the outside, while narratives invite temporary inhabitation from the inside; persuasion improves when the audience enters the storyworld, but legitimacy depends on later restoring critical distance and choice.

anti_signatures: The main task is auditing whether a story selects, omits, and sequences evidence fairly; use narrative_construction_audit.

anti_signatures: The main task is checking a grand narrative for internal contradictions; use metanarrative_coherence_and_internal_consistency_check.

anti_signatures: The main task is making a contested frame feel like common sense through institutions and intellectual authorities; use consent_manufacturing_through_intellectual_leadership.

anti_signatures: The main task is repeated exposure or recognizability without storyworld immersion; use fluency_based_preference_exploitation or a mere-exposure pattern.

anti_signatures: The main task is reframing a problem across causal layers or deep metaphors; use causal_layer_reframing.

anti_signatures: The message is deliberately false, materially deceptive, coercive, or designed to bypass consent; do not treat that as a valid application.

anti_signatures: The audience already accepts the attitude or belief and only needs operational instructions.

structural_intervention: Design an ethically bounded narrative pathway that transforms a target claim into a story-mediated experience: identify the audience prior state, define the belief-shift payload, encode it through characters and consequences, support transportation and identification, then provide reflection, evidence, and agency-preserving action links.

action_logic: Map the audience prior state: beliefs, identity stakes, counterarguments, emotional distance, trust level, and likely reactance.

action_logic: Define the persuasive payload as the smallest inspectable shift in attitude, belief, salience, intention, or norm perception.

action_logic: Translate the payload into a causal story arc with agents, goals, obstacles, choices, consequences, and meaningful stakes.

action_logic: Choose identification anchors that let the audience inhabit a perspective without erasing relevant difference or dissent.

action_logic: Balance transportation cues—specific detail, pacing, emotional continuity, and world coherence—with truth and uncertainty boundaries.

action_logic: Embed counterargument handling in the storyworld through credible conflict, complications, or reflective characters rather than straw opponents.

action_logic: Create an explicit post-story reflection or evidence bridge so the audience can inspect the claim after being moved by the story.

action_logic: Measure whether the shift is comprehension, salience, empathy, intention, norm perception, or durable behavior rather than transient affect alone.

action_logic: Revise the story when it creates misinterpretation, manipulation risk, backlash, stereotype reinforcement, or unsupported belief transfer.

decision_rules: Use this archetype only when experiential imagination is a legitimate part of the decision or learning problem.

decision_rules: Prefer direct evidence and plain claims when the audience mainly needs factual precision or procedural instruction.

decision_rules: Do not hide persuasive intent when transparency is required for consent, public trust, or institutional legitimacy.

decision_rules: Never use composite or fictionalized details in a way that makes unsupported claims appear empirically established.

decision_rules: If emotional transportation overwhelms the audience’s ability to evaluate tradeoffs, add reflection pauses, source links, or counterframe review.

decision_rules: If the story relies on stigma, fear, identity threat, or dehumanization, reject or redesign it.

decision_rules: Treat behavior change as valid only when the audience can still choose, question, compare, and opt out where appropriate.

target_invariants: Truthfulness and evidence traceability are preserved despite narrative compression.

target_invariants: The persuasive payload remains inspectable after the story experience.

target_invariants: Audience agency, consent, and dignity are not sacrificed for emotional impact.

target_invariants: Characters and groups are not reduced to stereotypes or manipulative props.

target_invariants: Counterarguments are represented strongly enough to avoid false inevitability.

target_invariants: The narrative does not create unbounded generalization from a single vivid case.

target_invariants: Action links are proportionate to the evidence, stakes, and authority of the communicator.

expected_outcomes: The audience can imagine the lived consequence of the target issue rather than only recite the claim.

expected_outcomes: Counterargument and reactance are reduced because the message is processed as situated experience first.

expected_outcomes: Beliefs, attitudes, intentions, or norm perceptions shift in the intended direction without covert deception.

expected_outcomes: The audience can articulate both the story’s point and the evidence or limits behind it.

expected_outcomes: Communication becomes more memorable, transferable, and action-linked than a purely expository message.

expected_outcomes: Misinterpretation, backlash, and emotional manipulation risks become visible enough to govern.

Public Health Case-Story Persuasion

short_definition: Use reviewed patient, clinician, caregiver, or community stories to make health risks and protective actions experientially salient.

distinctive_feature: High need for source disclosure, stigma review, vulnerability protection, and evidence boundaries.

distinct_from_parent: A domain-constrained form with stronger health-communication safeguards.

still_same_parent_because: The core mechanism remains narrative transportation plus post-story evaluation.

use_when: Health behavior depends on perceived risk, trust, and imagined consequence.

use_when: The story can be linked to accurate evidence and support resources.

example: A smoking cessation story followed by evidence, resources, and opt-in support.

failure_modes: A vivid case implies unsupported prevalence.

Counter-Stereotype Identification Story

short_definition: Shift an audience’s attitude by inviting identification with a character who disrupts an expected stereotype or category boundary.

distinctive_feature: The identification anchor deliberately crosses a stereotype boundary.

distinct_from_parent: More dependent on social identity, representation, and dignity safeguards than ordinary story persuasion.

still_same_parent_because: It still works through storyworld transportation and character identification.

use_when: The target belief is maintained by shallow category assumptions.

use_when: Affected groups can review representation and harm risk.

example: A realistic promotion story reveals how assumptions about caregiving distort performance interpretation.

failure_modes: Creating a single exceptional figure that leaves the stereotype intact.

Future Scenario Transportation

short_definition: Use an immersive future story to shift present-day salience, preparedness, or strategic intent.

distinctive_feature: The storyworld is explicitly future-oriented and must preserve uncertainty boundaries.

distinct_from_parent: It adds temporal and foresight constraints around uncertainty, plausibility, and scenario labeling.

still_same_parent_because: The belief shift still arises from narrative transportation and post-story evaluation.

use_when: The target issue is delayed, abstract, or hard to imagine from trend data alone.

use_when: The scenario is clearly labeled as plausible, speculative, or illustrative.

example: A flood-response future story followed by preparedness choices and risk maps.

failure_modes: A vivid possible future crowds out probability and uncertainty.

near_names:
Story-Based Persuasion
Transportation Persuasion
Narrative Influence
Storyworld Persuasion
Testimonial Campaign