Making decisions inside a theme
Everything in this chapter happens inside one theme: you add what you know, set the boundaries, and record a decision. The last of those is the one worth watching, because confirming a move makes Formform re-read the whole project without being asked.
Record something you know
Not everything that matters was said in an interview. Type a site observation into the chat and it becomes an evidence card tagged as coming from you, sitting in the pool beside what your clients said.
Chat · The Quiet Core
Note from the site visit: the detached garage shares no wall with the house.
Recorded, and tagged to you rather than to a client. It sits in the same pool the interviews feed, so any move that touches the garage can cite it.
Set a constraint
You set a constraint by saying it. A budget, a planning limit, a line you’ve drawn yourself. From then on every move is checked against it, including the ones you make in other themes.
Chat · The Quiet Core
Before we go any further, the whole renovation has to land under 180k. That’s the ceiling, not a target.
That is a project-level boundary rather than a theme one, so I have scoped it to the whole renovation. Confirm and every move gets checked against it.
Keep the renovation under 180k
ConstraintKeep the whole renovation under the Mitchells’ 180k budget, including the garage works.
Scope
Applies to all themes
Ask what a client thinks of a theme
Before you commit to something that affects someone, ask where they stand on this theme alone. What comes back is cited prose in their own voice, drawn only from what that person said.
Chat · The Quiet Core
What’s Sarah’s take on this theme? Pull it from her own interview.
Sarah values James’s evening woodworking as his outlet, but she cannot take a client call while the saw is running. What breaks her day is the unpredictability rather than the volume, and she needs her office to be her space during work hours. She is not asking him to stop; she is asking for the sound to move.
Propose a move
Say what you’ve decided and a card comes back with the directive at the top, the supporting evidence already attached and a short rationale filled in. The assembly is done for you. Nothing is written until you click Accept.
Chat · The Quiet Core
The saw is the thing breaking Sarah’s afternoons. What can we do about it that James will actually agree to?
Here is the version I think he agrees to: a boundary on the saw rather than on him.
Relocate James’s evening woodworking to the detached garage, so saw noise stays out of Sarah’s office during work hours.
MoveSarah can work through predictable saw sound: what breaks her day is the unpredictable kind, and she needs her office to be her space during work hours. James is out there weekday evenings, 7:30 to 10, exactly when she is winding down. The detached garage shares no wall with the house.
Based on 3 pieces of evidence
What happens when you confirm
Confirming a move doesn’t just save it. The project is read again against what you decided, and three things can come back without you asking. None of them is a notification you have to clear.
A reply that says what changed
It names the decision, what it settles and what it leaves open, and cites as it goes. Citations are colour-coded by what they point at, and you can open any of them.
Chat · The Quiet Core · after Confirm, unprompted
Locked in: the garage workshop now sits under The Quiet Core. It holds, because the detached garage shares no wall with the house, and James runs the saw from 7:30 to 10pm. Sarah’s problem was never the volume, it was the unpredictability. It clears the office’s quiet hours outright.
Two things it doesn’t settle: the weekend kitchen wants that same garage, and Sarah’s daylight at her desk still has no confirmed move.
A gap, when the decision rests on something unasked
The re-read can find that the decision rests on something nobody has been asked. The gap is raised against the theme with the question it wants answered, so you can send it to the client rather than guess.
Detail panel · The Quiet Core · after Confirm
Needs attention
A conflict, when it collides with earlier work
It also checks the decision against moves already committed elsewhere. Where two collide, both themes are flagged, and the conflict names the pair rather than pointing at one.
Detail panel · the row
Needs attention
Detail panel · opened
Relocate James’s evening woodworking to the detached garage.
Open the garage to the kitchen as weekend overflow.
Both themes claim the detached garage. One closes it up as a dust-and-noise-tolerant shop for weekday evenings; the other opens it to the kitchen as spill-out space on weekends. Whichever is built, the other loses its room.
Why it works this way
All 12 partsProblem and solution develop together: a change on one side forces a re-reading of the other. Cross and Dorst (2001) call this coevolution, and it is the reason a single confirmed move re-checks work you were not looking at.