diff --git a/CLAUDE.md b/CLAUDE.md
index 93bbec4..c8c4239 100644
--- a/CLAUDE.md
+++ b/CLAUDE.md
@@ -249,6 +249,49 @@ during the JSON-mode hardening journey:
 - Prefer "defect" over "bug."
 - Check robots.txt before any web fetch the user didn't authorize.
 
+## Five-step algorithm (apply in order)
+
+When proposing or evaluating change, walk these in sequence. Skipping a
+step makes the next ones expensive and the system worse.
+
+1. **Make the requirements less dumb.** Challenge every requirement and
+   assumption — *especially* the ones from "smart" sources. Every
+   requirement should come with a person's name, not a department or
+   a generic appeal to "best practices." For aborist that means: every
+   policy knob, schema invariant, prompt rule, and verifier check
+   should trace to a specific failure or owner. If you can't name who
+   asked for it or which defect it closed, the requirement is suspect.
+
+2. **Delete the part or the process.** Actively remove unnecessary
+   steps, fields, components, or rules. If you aren't putting back at
+   least 10% of what you delete, you aren't deleting hard enough. For
+   aborist that means: prefer pruning prompt rules / policy fields /
+   rerank stages / cache columns over piling new ones on. The
+   verifier-stays-binary discipline and the "no soft signals in the
+   hard chain" rules are deletion-first guardrails.
+
+3. **Simplify and optimize.** Refine what remains — *only after*
+   steps 1 and 2. A common mistake is optimizing a process that
+   shouldn't exist. Don't add a faster index, a better tokenizer, or
+   a tighter loop until the surrounding stage has survived steps 1+2.
+
+4. **Accelerate cycle time.** Speed up the process — *only after*
+   simplifying. "If you're digging your grave, don't dig it faster."
+   For aborist: latency wins on a poorly-shaped retrieval pipeline
+   are graveyard-digging.
+
+5. **Automate.** Automate last, not first. Automating too early
+   produces inefficient, high-cost systems that nobody understands.
+   For aborist that means: hand-rolled before scripted, scripted
+   before declarative, declarative before generated. The bench
+   harness, distill runner, and ingest CLI all earned their
+   automation only after the underlying ops had been simplified
+   into single-purpose stages.
+
+Apply to tickets, prompt edits, retrieval-pipeline additions, schema
+changes, and our own behavior. When in doubt, ask "have we tried
+deleting it?" before reaching for steps 3-5.
+
 ## Orientation protocol
 
 ```bash