Find the friction

Leverage hides where the work drags. Start there.

The interesting points are where the work is hard. We instrument real work to locate friction rather than measuring what is easy to measure. Friction marks where a small, well-aimed change moves the whole system: a leverage point, in the systems-theory sense.

The test: Are you measuring where the work actually drags, or where it is easy to instrument?

Why

The streetlight effect: measure the convenient thing and you get convenient findings that do not move the work. Complex problems rarely have solutions; they have leverage points, and those points are almost never where you would guess. The only way to find them is to go to the drag.

How we apply it

• We start from real harness work (long-running, structured tasks) and instrument the drag: context assembly, tool selection, how models are shown the work. Not toy benchmarks.
• O4 (representation) and O12 (over-tooling) both came from friction in actual agent work, not from a benchmark we went looking to win.