Trade Purity
Takehome: Trade Purity vs System Purity
Trade Purity
Trade purity is the assumption that competence lives primarily in individuals and their craft mastery. It selects people based on tacit skill (speed, technique, “good hands”), and relies on apprenticeship to transfer expertise.
Failure mode: it does not scale. When expertise lives in people, output is limited by labor scarcity, long learning curves, and inconsistent replication.
System Purity
System purity is the assumption that competence lives primarily in the system:
- Canonical design (CAD)
- Interfaces and standards
- Acceptance criteria
- Tooling and jigs
- Executable documentation
- Feedback loops and benchmarking
It selects people based on system alignment and learning-by-reference. Craft mastery still emerges—but as a product of the system, not a prerequisite.
Relationship
Trade purity optimizes for individual excellence. System purity optimizes for replicable excellence.
In civilization engineering, we must choose system purity, because replication and scalability matter more than artisanal scarcity.
Canonical Rule
We do not recruit for “who builds best.” We recruit for who can operate inside the canon, converge rapidly to system-defined correctness, and leave the system stronger than they found it.