# GROK’it Baton: Find the Source

Version 1.0 · https://grokit.liftthesparks.com/batons · License: MIT

**Purpose:** Follow a symptom back to where it actually starts, and prove it before fixing anything.

## How to use this baton
- **Printed, or alone:** work down the page with a pen. Every question can be answered without a computer.
- **With an AI (works with any capable AI):** paste this whole baton first, then your situation, and say: "Follow this baton. Ask me the questions one at a time. Mark everything KNOWN, ASSUMED or UNKNOWN. Stop at every human gate and wait for me."
- **With another person:** hand them this page and your answers. They should be able to pick up exactly where you are.

The baton does the organizing. You keep the decisions.

## Questions
1. Where does the symptom show up?
2. What has to work, upstream, for that spot to work? List the chain.
3. Which link in the chain changed most recently?
4. What record would show whether that link is working?
5. What would you expect to see if your guess is wrong?

## Method
1. Draw the chain from the person to the result: every system, account and handoff it passes through.
2. Mark each link KNOWN working, KNOWN broken, or UNKNOWN.
3. Check the cheapest UNKNOWN link first.
4. Stop when one link is shown broken and the links before it are shown working. That is the source.

## Source discipline
- Every claim gets a mark: **KNOWN** (a record or test shows it), **ASSUMED** (believed, not shown), **UNKNOWN** (nobody knows yet).
- A record beats a memory. A memory beats a guess. Say which one you are using.
- Write down where each source lives, so someone else can go look.

## Conflict discipline
- When two sources disagree, write both down side by side. Do not quietly pick one.
- The newer, more direct record usually wins, but say that you chose and why.
- If the conflict changes what happens next, it goes to a human gate.

## Human decision gates
- Access to any system you don't own. Ask the owner, don't borrow a login.
- Any check that could change or delete something. Read first, write only with permission.

## Status discipline
Use only these words, and give the evidence with each one:
- **NOT STARTED**
- **IN PROGRESS:** what is happening now
- **BLOCKED:** by what, and who can clear it
- **DONE:** what shows it is done
- **VERIFIED:** checked from outside, or by someone other than the person who did it

Done is not verified. A command that ran is not a result.

**Done when: one link is shown broken, with the record that shows it.**

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