principle-exhaust-the-design-space

Use when two or three plausible designs must be built and judged side by side before one is committed to, and no precedent in the codebase settles it, for instance a novel interaction, a mechanic that lives or dies on feel, a look-dev direction, or an architecture with several viable shapes. Requires competing candidates and an explicit comparison. One throwaway sketch answering a single design question is the prototype skill instead.