START

# EPA · START

**One page. Everything on it is quoted from the EPA canon; nothing here is new.**

EPA is a framework for asking the right questions while building. The questions change. The discipline does not.

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## The question

Asked with the work on the table:

**Is what I am working on right now for the user, or for me?**

"For me" is not an accusation; it makes direction visible. When the answer needs weighing, the six below are the room that opens.

## The six

**Education** · Does she learn what is happening by using it, or by reading about it afterwards?
**Purpose** · Whose purpose does this data serve: hers, or the platform's?
**Agency** · Is ownership how the system is built, or a setting she must claim later?
**Empowered** · What can she do with the system that she could not do without it, and can she still do what she could before?
**Privacy** · Are the lines on data facts of the stack, or rules someone can move?
**Architecture** · When the business logic and the user conflict, which one yields?

All six must pass. No lens is defended with another. A conflict between lenses means the construction is not finished yet.

## The first hour

1. Take one decision that is on the table this week. Not the whole product.
2. Two people: the one deciding what this should be, and the one deciding how it will actually behave. Never one alone.
3. Ask the entry question, then the six.
4. Write one page: what must hold. Commitments and constraints, not predictions. Date it. That page is your before-record, and it is what every later check honestly measures against.

**Expect red somewhere. That is the instrument working, not the work failing.** Red is a find. Most red means the construction has not been found yet, and finding it is work, not compromise.

## Then

- Working in a team → `epa-working-in-a-team.md`
- Building with an agent → `epa-agent-contract.md` as `AGENTS.md` in your repo root; calibrate against `negative-control.md` before trusting review
- Agentic work on git with CI and a protected branch → `epa-continuity-module.md`, then `icm/INSTALL.md` (not required of EPA as a whole; do not copy another repo's live calibration)
- Site or package onboarding cards → `epa-onboarding-paths.md`
- The full questions, three phases → `epa-question-set.md`
- What this actually is → `epa-constitution-v2.md`

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*EPA v2.0 · Hebbian AB · hebbian.org/epa · Text CC BY 4.0*