Two independent axes on one hint line. `kind` decides the head, `seen`
decides the tail, and neither reads the other — which is what let a second
kind arrive without reopening #3750's repeat question. Whether a record is
already on the exclusion ledger has nothing to do with how much force it
carries, so the seen branch is shared verbatim.
The noun carries the whole visual difference, deliberately. A reader skimming
an injected block gets one word to place the register, so the word that moves
is the one naming force: "Standing rule" / "Preference". Everything
structural after it is identical, so the kinds read as one set rather than
two formats.
Force is asserted in exactly one other place, and that moves too. A rule's
line says to read it BEFORE DECIDING IT DOES NOT APPLY, because dismissing a
rule unread is how the thing it prevents happens. A preference makes no such
claim: it says where to find HOW THIS HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE, and following it
buys consistency rather than correctness.
Guarded on both places at once. Pinning the noun alone would pass a line
reading "Preference … before deciding it does not apply" — label swapped,
instruction kept — which is worse than not distinguishing them, because it
looks handled.
And a guard on the independence claim itself, exercising all four
combinations: the way this breaks silently is a seen branch that grows a kind
test, leaving one combination rendered by nobody's intention.
Noted, not fixed: plugin/skills/using-scribe/SKILL.md still says "Standing
rules are binding" with no room for a kind that does not. That surface is
step 6's.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011cPyzNnegXHr5iRMzzy5KJ
bvandeusenandClaude Opus 5
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