Module 2 · Days 8–15
The craft of decomposing a policy into its structural parts — the unit operations of the discipline.
8 lectures
Lecture 2.1
Decomposition is the first unit operation of policy engineering: reading an instrument and separating it into the elements a machine will need. This lecture establishes the method and the discipline of not resolving ambiguity silently.
Read lecture →
Lecture 2.2
Definitions decide outcomes more often than rules do. This lecture treats the definition as the primary object of policy engineering: scoped, versioned, and shared across rules.
Read lecture →
Lecture 2.3
A rule is an operative statement binding conditions to a normative outcome. This lecture covers rule form, modality, and the discipline of writing one rule per statement.
Read lecture →
Lecture 2.4
Exceptions are where most policy failures live. This lecture treats the exception as a first-class object with its own conditions, authority, and expiry.
Read lecture →
Lecture 2.5
A condition is the point at which authority meets fact. This lecture examines evaluability: which conditions a machine can test, which require judgement, and how the boundary is declared.
Read lecture →
Lecture 2.6
Decision logic is the evaluable structure that turns facts into an outcome. This lecture covers ordering, completeness, and the requirement that every path terminate in a defined result.
Read lecture →
Lecture 2.8
A decomposition can be complete and still be incoherent. This lecture covers the failure modes that appear only once a policy is expressed as structure — the conflicts prose was able to conceal — and treats their detection as a required step before any artifact is issued.
Read lecture →