eng-ladder

Select the engineering altitude for implementation, design, review, or growth feedback when work may span components, teams, migrations, or hard-to-reverse choices. Triggers: 'how rigorous should this be', 'review this at the principal level', 'is this a design doc or just a PR'. A scoped change with an obvious owner and existing pattern routes straight to its builder or craft skill. Active-alert troubleshooting belongs to incident-investigation.