Why

Follow the consuming project's instructions and requested scope; use the portable defaults only where guidance is missing.

Method

1. Anchor the question in the changed code, symbol or behavior. Treat the user's proposed explanation as a hypothesis.
2. Locate introducing and corrective commits with scoped git log, git blame and diffs. Read the relevant diff and surrounding source, because line attribution alone does not establish intent.
3. Read linked ADRs, issues, PR discussions and design records only to answer the current question. Expand to other available authorized records only to resolve a specific gap. Do not search all connected accounts or private chats by default.
4. Record direct rationale, contrary evidence, plausible alternatives and inference separately. Code establishes mechanics, not necessarily motivation. A later comment can describe current policy without proving why the original implementation was chosen.
5. Return the supported explanation with sources, inference and unknowns. If work will change the design, name the constraints to preserve and the decisions to revisit. Describe the searched boundary: an empty bounded search means no rationale was found in that scope, and does not prove no record ever existed.

Take a worker that uses a lease instead of a process-local lock. Inspect the introducing change and related recovery contract. Source can establish cross-process expiry and recovery behavior; only a linked rationale or other authorized record can establish why the original author selected it. A linked design note may show crash-recovery motivation. If that note is absent, report the mechanism as confirmed and the motivation as inferred, with the searched history boundary.

Investigation limits

Do not create tickets or issues, message authors or send other messages while investigating or merely to complete a historical explanation.

For substantial historical investigation, the lead delegates bounded evidence questions to named Orbyn Investigators under the workflow, then inspects their cited records and owns the explanation. Narrow questions and children assigned a slice proceed directly.

Recover the introducing decision

When last-touch blame misses the origin, use scoped rename-following history and symbol/string introduction search (git log --follow for a selected file and pickaxe -S/-G for the relevant symbol), then inspect the introducing diff. Treat a later move/sync commit as a possible carrier rather than the decision or defect origin. Read material discussion, parent/duplicate chains and the finalized outcome before treating an issue title or preview as rationale; a final reversal can supersede its proposal. Bound the investigation by the unresolved question rather than scanning all history.

Authorized operational records

• Distinguish a bounded empty query from missing authentication, expired retention or unavailable history.
• Discover the actual tool/schema, select a relevant time/release/environment window and poll the same asynchronous query identity instead of resubmitting costly scans.
• Preserve denominator, sampling, refresh and instrumentation/schema changes before interpreting volume as adoption or causality.
• Representative primary events support relevance; generated diagnoses remain hypotheses.
• No connector installation, capture or cross-account search follows.