Acting as the CONTROL POLICY, I executed the fixed nine-step procedure once each, in order.

## Step 1 — Specify the decision
A critical capability today rests entirely on one component (a single point of failure). A fixed budget must be spent to make the capability more resilient. Two mutually exclusive proposals:
- **A**: build a second, independent path so the capability survives if the existing component fails (redundancy / diversity).
- **B**: spend the whole budget hardening the one existing component to maximum reliability.
Success criteria (both must hold): (i) no single failure may take down the capability; (ii) the budget must be used effectively. The decision is the choice of which proposal to fund.

## Step 2 — Identify operative primes (search_prime / search_by_facets / get_prime)
Ran a semantic `search_prime` on the meta-model and a `search_by_facets` decomposition (single-point-of-failure / two-independent-paths / concentrate-on-one-element / diminishing-returns / correlated-failure-modes). Surfaced and pulled full entries for:
- **redundancy** — duplicate functionally-equivalent components so system function needs fewer than all of them; the load-bearing property is *failure-mode independence*, not copy count.
- **fault_tolerance** — the system-level *property* of continuing service under component failure; "no single point of failure" is its defining commitment; redundancy is one mechanism for it.
- **margin_of_safety** — scaling up a *single* element's capacity to absorb demand variation; explicitly "not the same as redundancy" and does not remove a single point of failure.
- **refinement** — iterative improvement of one artifact toward a target; subject to diminishing returns past a ceiling (this is what B is).
Supporting hits noted: systemic_risk, robustness, FMEA, adaptive_capacity, critical_mass.

## Step 3 — Salience-rank
1. **fault_tolerance** (directly encodes success criterion (i): no single point of failure).
2. **redundancy** (the mechanism A proposes; carries the independence caveat).
3. **margin_of_safety / refinement** (what B is: hardening + iterative reliability gain on one element — relevant because it defines B's structural ceiling).
4. systemic_risk / robustness (framing); FMEA (analysis lens). 
Pruned-adjacent: critical_mass, adaptive_capacity (peripheral).

## Step 4 — Prune
Dropped critical_mass, adaptive_capacity, scaling, critical_juncture as off-target (they matched on "critical" surface lexis, not structure). Kept fault_tolerance, redundancy, margin_of_safety, refinement, plus systemic_risk as context.

## Step 5 — Build a typed relational model
- Entity: CAPABILITY (must persist).
- Dependency: CAPABILITY --depends-on--> COMPONENT_1 (sole path).
- Property required by criterion (i): NOT(exists X such that failure(X) ⇒ failure(CAPABILITY)) — i.e., no single point of failure.
- Approach A: add COMPONENT_2 with an independent path; CAPABILITY depends on (C1 OR C2). Single-point-of-failure removed *iff* C1 and C2 fail independently (no shared/common-mode dependency).
- Approach B: raise reliability(C1) → 1−ε; CAPABILITY still depends on C1 alone. Single point of failure *remains*; only its probability shrinks, with diminishing returns as ε→0.

## Step 6 — Construct a domain-stripped meta-model
"A function with exactly one load-bearing element must be made survivable under a fixed cost. Option 1 adds a second, independently-failing element so the function needs only one of the two to hold (failure probability ~ product of two small independents). Option 2 lowers the single element's failure probability but leaves a one-of-one dependency. The stated invariant is 'no single failure may remove the function.'" A one-of-one structure cannot satisfy a no-single-failure invariant regardless of how small ε becomes; an N≥2 independent structure can.

## Step 7 — Query archetypes whose source primes match (find_archetypes_for_prime / get_archetype)
`find_archetypes_for_prime(redundancy)` returned the resilience family; pulled three:
- **redundant_backup_provisioning** — for a critical function with a single point of failure, provision a maintained, *independent* substitute with activation rules; explicitly distinguishes itself from "Robustness Margin Design" (making one structure more tolerant), which it classes as a *non-example* of solving single-point dependence.
- **path_redundancy_provisioning** — when continuity depends on one fragile path, pre-provision an alternate path; viability + failure-domain separation are the invariants.
- **common_mode_failure_analysis** — the necessary caveat on A: a second path only counts if it does not share the decisive failure cause; "cosmetic redundancy" is the central failure mode.

## Step 8 — Apply each candidate's logic to BOTH approaches and reconcile
- **fault_tolerance** logic: criterion (i) = "no single point of failure" is its literal definition; only an architecture where the function survives any single element's loss qualifies. → A satisfies; B cannot (one-of-one remains).
- **redundant_backup_provisioning / path_redundancy logic**: A is the canonical instance — independent substitute path. B is explicitly named a *non-example* (hardening a single structure ≠ removing single-point dependence). → favors A.
- **margin_of_safety / refinement logic**: B raises reliability but hits diminishing returns and never reaches the no-single-failure invariant; a hardened single component still fails on its own residual ε, on unknown-unknown failure modes, or on any event outside its design envelope. → confirms B fails criterion (i).
- **common_mode_failure_analysis logic** (reconciliation / the one way A can fail): A only delivers if the second path is genuinely independent — no shared power, control, supplier, or design lineage. This does not favor B; it conditions A. The honest reconciliation: A *can* meet both criteria provided independence is engineered and validated; B *cannot* meet criterion (i) at any budget. So the candidates do not conflict — they converge on A, with an independence requirement attached.

## Step 9 — Evaluate fit against failure conditions / success criteria
Walk each approach against the two success criteria:
- **B against criterion (i)**: FAILS categorically. However reliable C1 becomes, the capability still has exactly one thing whose failure is total. The criterion forbids that structure outright. Spending the whole budget here buys a smaller probability but the *same forbidden topology*. Hard fail.
- **A against criterion (i)**: PASSES — after adding an independent second path, no single element's failure is catastrophic.
- **A against criterion (ii) "budget used effectively"**: PASSES, and more effectively than B, because B's spend is subject to diminishing returns against an unreachable target while A's spend directly purchases the required property. The one risk to A's effectiveness is buying *cosmetic* redundancy (a second path sharing the primary's failure cause); the mitigation is to require failure-domain independence and test it — i.e., spend A's budget on a *genuinely* independent path, not a nominal one.
Decision: fund **A**. It is the only option that can satisfy the stated invariant, and it uses the budget against an achievable target. The binding consideration is that B leaves the single point of failure in place by construction, which the success criteria explicitly disallow.

===DECISION_BEGIN===
DECISIVE_FACTOR: The success criterion forbids any single failure from taking down the capability, and hardening one component leaves it as a sole dependency no matter how reliable it becomes, whereas an independent second path removes that sole dependency outright.
CHOICE: A
JUSTIFICATION: Making the one existing component more reliable lowers the odds of failure but never removes the fact that its failure alone still wipes out the capability, and reliability spending hits diminishing returns well short of eliminating that exposure. Adding a second, independent path means the capability keeps working when either path fails, which is the only way to meet the rule that no single failure can take it down. The budget must be spent on a path that truly fails independently of the original — not one that quietly shares the same power, control, or supplier — so the two cannot go down together. That directs the fixed budget at the actual requirement rather than at an unreachable target.
===DECISION_END===
