The Encoding Test
If you cannot turn a strategy into a rule a system could follow, you do not have a strategy — you have a preference. Here is how to find out which.
Write the strategy as one sentence a stranger could act on without asking you a question.
Translate it into an explicit default: always, never, or only-when. If you cannot, it is still a feeling.
A real rule is expensive to change. If it can be quietly overridden, it will be.
Could the rule survive your absence? If it needs you in the room, it is a dependency, not a system.
Worked example — the framework applied to a real decision, not a hypothetical.
These companion resources are still being written — nothing here is downloadable yet. Everything the framework needs to be run by hand is already on the Steps and Prompt tabs. Want to be told when they land? Say so here.
Most strategy decks shrink under this test, and that is the point. What survives is the handful of rules someone could actually follow without you in the room — which is the only part that was ever doing any work.