Prepare the Seriatim simplification sprint

docs/conventions.md

@@ -29,14 +29,23 @@
   `community.general` is an approved, stable dependency and its modules may be
   selected freely when appropriate; declare and pin the collection wherever a
   role or collection depends on it.
-- Trust the documented contract of each Ansible module, including its
-  idempotence and change detection.
-- Gather state only when the result controls necessary behavior that the
-  responsible module cannot determine. Fingerprints, checksums, sidecar state,
-  manual drift detection, and speculative recovery paths require an explicit
-  acceptance criterion and rationale. Do not precede a declarative module with
-  a probe or recreate its internal logic unless a concrete requirement cannot
-  be expressed by the module itself.
+- Do not strengthen the specification. Implement the requested invariants
+  without inventing additional guarantees for integrity, provenance, drift
+  recovery, corruption detection, rollback, or similar behavior.
+- Prefer convergence over state inspection. Declare what should be true and
+  let the relevant module reconcile it.
+- Trust Ansible's abstraction boundary. A module that manages state owns the
+  checks necessary to manage that state. Inspect it beforehand only when the
+  observed state is independently required.
+- Complexity requires a requirement. Every additional task, conditional,
+  registered variable, or state probe must correspond to behavior the role is
+  required to provide.
+- Persisted role-private state is a design smell. Fingerprints, checksum
+  databases, stamps, manifests, and similar bookkeeping require specific
+  justification.
+- **Assume convergence first.** Before adding machinery for an edge case,
+  determine whether rerunning the ordinary desired-state operations already
+  repairs it.
 - Consider whether a conditional task or a notified handler best expresses the
   dependency. A `when` condition keeps triggers visible at the action site but
   grows with their number. Notifications keep the action independent of the