assumption-bounty

Assumption Bounty

Every plan is a stack of beliefs wearing a costume of facts. Most die from an assumption nobody wrote down — because unwritten assumptions can't be tested, assigned, or noticed when they quietly become false. The bounty hunt pays by the find: every hidden belief extracted, priced, and ranked by (cost if wrong) ÷ (cost to test).

Required Inputs

• The document — plan, model, PRD, forecast, strategy. Spreadsheet-backed documents: include the key hardcoded numbers; each one is an assumption in a trench coat.
• Optional: which assumptions the team already knows about — the bounty only pays for hidden ones, and knowing the acknowledged list sharpens the hunt.

Where Assumptions Hide

• In verbs: "users will migrate" (will they?), "the team can absorb" (can it?)
• In adjectives: "conservative estimate", "simple integration", "standard terms"
• In silence: what the document never mentions — pricing pages that assume no competitor response, hiring plans that assume no attrition
• In hardcoded numbers: every constant in the model (conversion 3%, CAC $400) is a belief with a confidence interval nobody stated
• In the past tense: "as we saw in the pilot" — assuming the pilot generalises
• In org charts: "marketing will drive awareness" assumes a team's priorities that were never negotiated

Output Format

1. The ledger — table, ranked by danger score: assumption (quoted or reconstructed) | where it hides | cost if wrong (order of magnitude, in the plan's own currency: money, weeks, credibility) | cost to test | danger = wrong÷test.
2. The big three — the top of the ledger, each with its cheapest decisive test: what to do this week, what result confirms vs kills, who can run it. A test that can't kill the assumption isn't a test.
3. The upgrade list — assumptions that become facts with one email/query ("we assume the contract allows X" → legal can answer today). Free confidence; harvest it.
4. The honest confidence statement — one paragraph the author could paste into the document: "This plan holds if A, B, and C; A is tested, B is testable by <date>, C is a bet we're choosing to take." Plans with this paragraph survive contact with executives.

Quality Checks

• [ ] Every ledger entry is traceable to the document (quote or named silence) — no imported generic risks
• [ ] Costs are in the plan's own units and orders of magnitude, not "high/medium/low" theatre
• [ ] Each big-three test can actually KILL the assumption — confirmation-only tests are flagged and replaced
• [ ] At least two upgrade-list items exist, or the hunt states the document was unusually explicit (rare; say it with respect)
• [ ] The confidence statement names the chosen bets as bets — the honesty is the deliverable

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not list more than ~12 assumptions — past that, extraction has become transcription; rank and cut
• [ ] Do not price everything as catastrophic — a ledger where everything kills the plan hides the one that actually will
• [ ] Do not propose tests that cost more than being wrong — the ratio is the whole game
• [ ] Do not treat acknowledged assumptions as finds — the bounty is for the hidden ones; padding with the known list is claiming someone else's kill
• [ ] Do not moralise about assuming — plans require assumptions; the sin is anonymity, not existence