Status: law by decision. Decision 0017 records the ruling: the friction ladder governs destructive actions. The ladder’s text sits inside §10 of the constitution, a section otherwise still proposal; the decision log wins over the section’s older framing, and this page follows the decision.

principle. friction is proportional to reversibility and blast radius. uniform “are you sure?” is an anti-steal: it spends the same interruption on a reversible act as on a catastrophic one, and trains users to click through both.

rule — the ladder (law; decision 0017).

• reversible → frictionless; no confirmation, offer undo.
• consequential → a confirmation that names the object and what it takes with it. (“delete ‘morning setup’? its 2 automations go too” is this rung done right.)
• irreversible → a review summary plus an explicit confirm.
• catastrophic → type the name — almost never.

a confirmation naming neither object nor consequence fails review. confirmations name the object and the blast radius; the least reversible actions carry the most deliberate gates, and the deliberate gates escalate in kind, not just in count.

standing audit. the four destructive behaviours that existed when the ladder was ratified are to be audited against its rungs; every new destructive behaviour is placed on the ladder at design time, as a lookup, not an invention.

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Canonical text: §10, security presentation (friction ladder), in the design language document. Ratified by decision 0017.