Context Gap
Reach for Context Gap the moment a request feels new and the afternoon feels open.
- Someone asks for a feature, report, alert, or automation and your first instinct is to start building.
- The request uses words like "new", "from scratch", or "we need a way to".
- You pay for more tools than you can list from memory.
- The codebase or knowledge base is older than your memory of it.
Run it on anything that feels new. Five minutes is cheap next to a build you did not need.
"Look around first" is advice everybody agrees with and nobody follows when the request feels new. Context Gap makes it mechanical: the first move on any request is to go look, then be honest about how much of the answer was already sitting there.
The Protocol
- Thirty seconds: write down the need. The problem, the rough shape of a solution, and what done looks like.
- Two to five minutes: search. The codebase, the knowledge base, the tools you already pay for, and the patterns that already run.
- Classify. Every search result lands in exactly one of six states.
- Write the result. Not "I looked": the state, the evidence, and the next step given that state.
The Six States
| State | What You Found | Next Step |
|---|---|---|
| No Gap | It exists and works | Use it. Nothing to build. |
| Config Gap | It runs, and a flag, threshold or rule needs changing | Set the value. |
| Completion Gap | The scaffolding exists, with under fifty lines of real work left | Finish it. |
| Extension Gap | Something similar sits right next to it | Extend the neighbor. |
| Pattern Gap | The codebase already shows how this kind of thing gets built here | Build it the house way. |
| True Gap | Genuinely new | Build it, and say so with evidence. |
The skill's working estimate is that about 40% of tasks land in the first bucket. That figure is the author's, not a measured rate, and the split across the other five buckets has not been measured. A True Gap is the rare case people assume is the normal one.
Why It Ranks So High
"You already have this, it's called X" is the most valuable sentence this habit produces, and it never feels like a win in the moment, because it feels like five minutes spent not building. Across a year of requests it is the biggest single saving in the kit. The failure it prevents is invisible. Nobody notices the thing they did not build twice.
Where It Sits In The Loop
Context Gap runs before anything gets built. It tells you whether to build. It does not tell you whether the plan is any good, which is Debate's job. "I searched thoroughly" is still a claim that Verify can ask to see.