lyndonkl/skills/stress-test-analogy

Stress Test Analogy

Table of Contents

• Workflow
• Where-it-breaks taxonomy
• Worked example
• Guardrails

Related skills: Called by the Intuition Builder per framing. Input is one framing (source + target + mapping from map-analogy-to-concept). Output feeds the final artifact's "Where it breaks" section for each framing and the Technical Reviewer's flag-boundary-break on drafts.

Workflow

For one framing (source → target + mapping):
- [ ] Step 1: Identify the mapping's weakest link — which source-component-to-target-component pairs are forced?
- [ ] Step 2: Generate 2-3 edge cases where the forced pair fails
- [ ] Step 3: Write the boundary as one or two sentences — specific and named
- [ ] Step 4: Propose a "fold" — how the writer turns this break into content in the draft
- [ ] Step 5: Rate fold value: high | medium | low (high = the break is its own paragraph or sub-section)

Step 3: Boundary phrasing

The boundary sentence should be specific enough that the reader could verify it. Good: "The drawer metaphor implies physical contiguity in memory, but a KV cache is logically indexed, not physically contiguous." Bad: "The analogy doesn't quite work at scale."

Step 4: The fold

The writer's voice turns boundary-breaks into features, not hidden flaws. A good fold says: "This is where the analogy stops working — and here's what's interesting about why." Propose one sentence for the writer to edit.

Where-it-breaks taxonomy

Analogies break in predictable ways:

• Scale break: works for small, fails for large (or vice versa).
• Category break: the two domains are structurally different (a cache is not physically a drawer).
• Dynamics break: static analogy, dynamic target (or vice versa).
• Granularity break: the analogy glosses over an important sub-mechanism.
• Causality break: the analogy implies the wrong causal direction.

Use these tags to classify the break type in the output.

Worked example

Framing: "KV cache is a library card catalog with a fixed drawer count."

Mapping (from map-analogy-to-concept):

• library = the cache data structure
• drawer = one slot in the cache (capacity-bounded)
• card = one (key, value) projection pair
• lookup = retrieval by key
• eviction policy = what you do when drawers fill

Stress test:

1. Category break: drawers imply physical location. KV cache entries are not physically located; they're logically indexed in a tensor. Edge: readers familiar with memory layout will find this confusing.
2. Dynamics break: a library catalog is mostly static (you add cards; you rarely evict). A KV cache evicts constantly under streaming generation. Edge: the writer must describe eviction, which the library analogy barely touches.
3. Granularity break: a card catalog doesn't do attention — it's pure retrieval. But KV cache IS the state that attention reads from. Edge: the analogy covers "store and look up" but not "what the lookup enables."

Boundary sentence: "The drawer metaphor captures capacity and lookup, but it hides two things: eviction dynamics under streaming decode (real drawers don't lose cards every turn) and the role of the cache as input to attention (a card catalog doesn't compute anything — a KV cache does)."

Proposed fold (for the writer): "Say upfront that the library image is for the shape of the thing, not the motion. Then let eviction be the paragraph that breaks the image — 'real drawers don't evict a card every time you add a new one; a KV cache does, which is where the analogy starts needing a second image.' That becomes the pivot."

Fold value: high. This break is a whole paragraph in the draft.

Guardrails

1. Every framing gets a boundary. If you can't find one, you haven't stress-tested enough — try harder.
2. Boundary sentence must be specific and verifiable. No "the analogy breaks at scale."
3. Classify the break with one of the 5 taxonomy tags.
4. Fold-value rating is 3 levels only: high / medium / low. Nothing is "critical" or "trivial."
5. Do not propose replacement analogies inside this skill — the writer picks from the 5 framings. Proposing a 6th contradicts the "5 framings" contract.
6. Keep the output compact: 1 boundary sentence + 1 fold sentence per framing. The writer does the rest.

Quick reference

• Input: one framing (source + mapping).
• Output: {boundary: str, break_type: str, fold: str, fold_value: high|medium|low}.
• Runs once per framing (5 times per Intuition Builder invocation).