---
name: reasoning-templates
description: Execute the PAG reasoning protocols in .{provider}/templates/ when producing a plan, checklist, task breakdown, workflow, agent, or verification flow. Mandatory in plan mode - draft, then compare against the checklist template, then restructure. Use before writing any structured construct, not after.
---

# reasoning-templates

The templates in `.{provider}/templates/` are **executable protocols for reasoning**, not reference docs.
Producing a structured construct means walking the template's ten-node loop as stated.

The full rule is `.{provider}/rules/template.rule.md`.

## Which template

The dispatch key is each template's LAYER 0 genesis question.

| producing                                 | template    |
| ----------------------------------------- | ----------- |
| plan, checklist, task breakdown           | `checklist` |
| verdict on claims, audit, context check   | `claim`     |
| shared abstraction from repeated evidence | `pattern`   |
| reusable specialized investigator         | `agent`     |
| a template from an executed document      | `layer`     |

## Plan mode: three steps, never one

1. **Draft** the plan from the task.
2. **Read `checklist`** and compare the draft to it, node by node and gate by gate.
3. **Restructure** the plan to what the template enforces.

Step 3 is never skipped on the grounds that the draft already covers it. The draft is raw material, and the
template is the authority.

## What the restructure adds

An ordinary plan lacks all of these:

- **Worth before work:** the branch is `argmax(utility − cost)` over admissible branches, with the ranking shown,
  rather than the first workable idea.
- **Topology ordering:** dependency-topological then genesis. Severity routes failure and never groups or orders
  phases.
- **Genesis consistency:** no phase depends on a later-genesis output than it produces. Such an inversion is a
  decomposition defect, not a tie to break.
- **Four dependency axes** per phase: sequential, lateral, diagonal and propagation.
- **Ripple chains:** affected entities carried as **names, never counts**. An empty dimension carries its
  applicability evidence rather than being omitted.
- **Evidence contracts:** every material claim carries evidence, a named refuter, and confidence at or above
  threshold. "No contradiction found" is not support.
- **Gate separation:** generation-time gates resolve during planning, and future execution gates ship
  **unchecked**.
- **Explicit termination:** saturation and completion and verification. A self-assessed "done" does not
  terminate.

## The four gates always run

`tel-priority` · `constrain` · `ver-stop` · `ter-stop`. The epistemic axes are selectable, and these four are
not. A gate naming no evidence is ceremony and fails.

## Execution discipline

**Follow as stated.** Node order, contracts, typed decisions and invariants are not condensed or partially
applied.

**The mechanism transfers, and catalogs re-derive.** The loop, typing and gates are domain-neutral. Where a
template's catalog assumes a construct this tree does not carry, such as a class hierarchy, a migration surface, a
build step or a registry, that catalog is re-derived against the constructs that are here, and where the slot
naming one resolves ABSENT, its branch does not run. Substituting the mechanism is the violation, and re-deriving
a catalog is the work. **An example catalog is the half a token sweep cannot see**, so it is found by reading the
protocol whole rather than by searching it.

**Executed only.** A descriptive artifact (reference, spec, contract, note) is not full-shaped, and forcing the
loop onto it is the Procrustean failure.

**Never consolidate the templates.** Each inlines the full structure so it stays independently executable, which
is the deliberate exception to the duplication rule.