LEN-0160
Constraint Sufficiency Lens
Evaluates whether declared constraints are sufficient to eliminate structural degrees of freedom.
Primary Pattern Matches
Constraints Underspecified
A structural condition where declared constraints are insufficient to eliminate ambiguity or multiple admissible states.
Lens Application
The Constraint Sufficiency Lens is a strong inspection mechanism for Constraints Underspecified because it examines whether available constraints are strong enough to narrow the structure to a determinate state. It supports focused inspection of missing bounds, weak declarations, or unresolved alternatives that allow the underspecified condition to persist.
Inspect For
- Multiple admissible interpretations under the same constraints
- Missing boundary conditions or limiting rules
- Constraint sets that allow unresolved alternatives
- Dependencies that remain unconstrained or implicit
Avoid
Treat ambiguity as an inspection signal, not confirmation that Constraints Underspecified has been established.
Incomplete Declaration
A structural condition where an element is declared but required attributes, dependencies, or linked definitions are missing.
Lens Application
The Constraint Sufficiency Lens is a primary inspection mechanism for Incomplete Declaration because it examines whether a declared element has enough constraints to determine its required structure. It helps surface missing attributes, absent dependency links, underspecified references, or unresolved definitions that leave the declaration structurally open.
Inspect For
- Required attributes left blank, implicit, or undefined
- Dependencies declared without usable targets
- References to missing or incomplete linked definitions
- Constraints that allow multiple unresolved interpretations
Avoid
Treat insufficient constraints as evidence for further inspection rather than as confirmation that the declaration is incomplete.
Unbounded Scope
A structural condition where an operation, authority, rule, or expansion has no declared upper bound, boundary, or termination condition.
Lens Application
The Constraint Sufficiency Lens is a primary inspection mechanism for Unbounded Scope because it examines whether the constraints around an operation, authority, rule, or expansion actually remove open degrees of freedom. It is especially useful for spotting scope that appears bounded in wording but remains structurally extendable in practice.
Inspect For
- Missing caps, endpoints, or termination triggers
- Broad discretion without limiting criteria
- Expansion clauses without defined thresholds
- Constraints that can be bypassed or reinterpreted
Avoid
Treat insufficient constraint signals as inspection cues rather than confirmation that Unbounded Scope is present.
Secondary Pattern Matches
Density Vacuum
A structural condition where a region expected to contain sufficient nodes, edges, coverage, or relationships falls below declared density thresholds.
Lens Application
The Constraint Sufficiency Lens applies indirectly to Density Vacuum by testing whether constraints are specific enough to expose under-connected, under-covered, or weakly related areas. It does not directly measure density, but can reveal where missing constraint coverage allows structural gaps to remain ambiguous.
Inspect For
- Constraints that fail to require minimum node or edge coverage
- Regions where sparse relationships still satisfy declared rules
- Unconstrained degrees of freedom around expected coverage
- Thresholds implied but not explicitly declared
Avoid
Treat constraint insufficiency as a supporting inspection signal, not a density measurement or confirmation that Density Vacuum is present.
Related Issues
AI Adds Work Not Requested
The AI adds tasks, steps, analysis, checks, changes, or follow-up work that the user did not ask for.
AI Forgets Earlier Constraints
A constraint, instruction, preference, or decision that should persist through the task stops affecting later output.
AI Touches Unrelated Scope
The AI affects, edits, analyzes, changes, or reasons over material outside the scope of the requested task.
Answer Has No Traceable Source Link
The answer makes a claim, recommendation, citation, or factual statement without a source link or trace path that allows the user to verify where it came from.
Answer Has Too Many Paths
The answer presents too many possible paths, interpretations, options, or next steps without enough structure to choose among them.
Diagnostic Area Has No Coverage
A known diagnostic area, failure mode, requirement, or review dimension has no Issue, check, rubric item, or workflow coverage.
Evaluation Rubric Has Coverage Gap
An evaluation rubric, grading standard, or review checklist leaves part of the required evaluation space uncovered.
Fallback Authority Is Missing
The system does not declare who or what has authority when the primary owner, rule, tool, source, or decision path is unavailable or inconclusive.
Format Rule Too Weak
The format instruction is too vague, incomplete, or optional to reliably produce output that satisfies the expected structure.
Hallucinated Fields
The AI adds fields, keys, attributes, columns, or structured elements that were not declared, requested, or allowed by the expected schema.
Invalid JSON Output
The AI returns malformed JSON or structured output that cannot be parsed.
Missing Fallback for Unavailable Information
The task does not declare what the AI should do when required information, sources, tools, fields, or evidence are unavailable.
Missing Required Fields
The AI returns structured output that omits fields required by the schema, workflow, parser, form, or downstream consumer.
One Prompt Carries Too Many Meanings
A single prompt carries too many meanings, goals, roles, constraints, or implied tasks for the AI to interpret consistently.
Output Exceeds Length Limit
The AI output exceeds a declared length, token, word, character, section, field, or size limit.
Policy Area Has No Examples
A policy, rule, standard, or guidance area has no examples showing how it should apply to real cases.
Policy Decision Depends on Itself
A policy decision requires the outcome of the same policy decision before it can be made.
Prompt Does Not Say What to Exclude
The prompt declares what to include but does not declare what should be excluded, allowing unwanted scope, sources, content, or actions into the result.
Prompt Has Too Many Valid Interpretations
The prompt allows too many reasonable interpretations, causing the AI to choose among valid paths without enough guidance.
Prompt Only Works After Retry
The prompt fails, misroutes, or produces an unusable response on one attempt but works after retry without a meaningful change to the input.
Relationship Map Has Missing Links
A map of related Issues, rules, patterns, cases, fields, tools, or workflow steps is missing links needed to navigate or reason over the structure.
Repeated Constraints Create Confusion
Repeated constraints, instructions, limits, or exclusions make the task harder to interpret instead of clearer.
Results Vary Too Much
Repeated or comparable runs produce outputs that vary more than the task, workflow, or user can tolerate.
Review Rubric Missing Required Criteria
A review rubric, grading rule, evaluation checklist, or classification standard lacks criteria required to make the review reliable.
Same Instructions Allow Different Outputs
The same instructions are broad or underspecified enough to allow materially different outputs that all appear compliant.
Saved Memory Not Used
A saved memory, preference, instruction, or durable context item exists but does not affect the AI output when it should.
Single Step Carries Too Many Decisions
One prompt, workflow step, review stage, or agent action carries too many decisions for the system or user to evaluate cleanly.
Task Has No Clear Limit
The task does not declare where the AI should stop, what is out of scope, or what counts as enough work.
Too Many Tool Calls
The AI or agent makes more tool calls, searches, retrievals, API calls, or integration actions than the task requires or permits.
Tool Exists but Required Inputs Are Missing
A usable tool or integration exists, but the AI or agent does not have the required inputs, permissions, fields, identifiers, or context needed to call it correctly.
Workflow Stage Has Too Few Checks
A workflow stage lacks enough checks, gates, criteria, or review conditions to safely support the work it controls.
Workflow Step Has No Decision Owner
A workflow step requires a decision, approval, judgment, or routing choice, but no owner is declared for making it.
Workflow Step Lacks Required Conditions
A workflow step can run, route, approve, reject, or continue without the required conditions being declared or checked.