id: P-003
slug: the-ninety
version: 0.1.0
title: The Ninety
layer: create
agent: The Navigator
cadence: quarterly
duration_minutes: 60
difficulty: moderate
status: draft
updated: 2026-08-02
license: CC-BY-SA-4.0
summary: "A ninety-day route with exactly three components: one capability moved
  one tier, one artifact that will exist at the end, one person who will judge
  it. Budgeted against your measured overrun ratio, and carrying its abandonment
  conditions in writing from the first day."
cost:
  time: 60 minutes to build; ninety days to run
  discomfort: moderate at construction, high at the day-30 review
  prerequisites:
    - A completed Self Map (P-001)
    - At least six Reckonings (P-002), for a stable time ratio
    - Willingness to name, in advance, the conditions under which you will stop
produces: route
requires:
  - P-001
  - P-002
feeds: []
sections:
  - id: selection
    title: The Selection
    minutes: 15
    purpose: Choose one capability to move one tier. One. The constraint is the
      protocol.
  - id: artifact
    title: The Artifact
    minutes: 10
    purpose: Name the thing that will exist on day ninety and does not exist now.
  - id: proof
    title: The Proof
    minutes: 10
    purpose: Name the person who will judge it. Without external judgment nothing
      changes tier.
  - id: route
    title: The Route
    minutes: 15
    purpose: Three checkpoints, budgeted against the measured ratio rather than the
      hoped-for one.
  - id: kill
    title: The Kill Conditions
    minutes: 10
    purpose: Write the conditions for stopping now, while stopping is still cheap to
      imagine.
rules:
  - One capability. Not two. A route with two capabilities is a route with none.
  - The artifact must be inspectable by someone other than you.
  - The proof must name a person, not an audience.
  - The budget uses the median time ratio from P-002, not the subject's estimate.
  - Kill conditions are written before day one and may not be revised after day
    thirty.
adversary_mode:
  supported: true
  effect: The Navigator refuses routes whose artifact cannot be inspected, whose
    proof names no person, or whose kill conditions are unfalsifiable. It also
    checks the selection against the Self Map's aversions and names the case
    where the chosen capability is the one being avoided by working on something
    adjacent.
honesty:
  - Ninety days is a convention, not a finding. Nothing in the literature
    identifies it as an optimal interval.
  - Moving one tier in ninety days is achievable for some capabilities and not
    others. The protocol cannot tell you which, and does not pretend to.
  - Kill conditions reduce sunk-cost persistence in principle. Whether writing
    them down changes behaviour ninety days later is untested here.