Pre-Flight Check

Benchmarked against: Anthropic — Reducing latency / Effort levels Rule source: EGS v1.2 Ch.5 UB ref: ub-a0914abf17a7 (Full SOP) Enforcement: Mandatory before all non-trivial tasks

The Pre-Flight Check is SuperPortia's 30-second risk assessment before any non-trivial task. It scores three dimensions on a 0–2 scale to produce a composite risk score (0–6) that determines the required preparation level.

Think of it as a pilot's checklist before takeoff — quick, structured, and non-negotiable.

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When to use

Every non-trivial task requires a Pre-Flight Check. "Non-trivial" means anything that:

• Modifies production data or infrastructure
• Involves a technical decision (engine choice, architecture, approach)
• Touches code in multiple files
• Has external side effects (publishing, messaging, deployments)
• Could consume significant resources (Opus tokens, API calls)

Exceptions (no PFC needed): simple queries, reading files, UB searches, casual conversation.

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The 3D scoring model

Three dimensions, each scored 0–2:

Dimension 1: Blast Radius

How much does this affect if it goes wrong?

Score	Level	Description	Examples
0	Local	Affects only my current session	Reading a file, local search
1	Ship	Affects this ship (SS1/SS2/SS3)	Editing code, modifying config
2	Fleet	Affects multiple ships or external systems	Cloud UB changes, publishing, deployments

Dimension 2: Knowledge Freshness

How confident am I in my knowledge about this task?

Score	Level	Description	Examples
0	Timeless	Frameworks, methods, stable APIs	Git commands, SQL syntax, design patterns
1	Recent	Verified within 30 days	Library versions checked this month
2	Perishable	Fast-moving tech, unverified	AI SDK APIs, cloud platform features, pricing

Dimension 3: Reversibility

How hard is it to undo this action?

Score	Level	Description	Examples
0	Easy	Undo with one command	git checkout, file restore
1	Moderate	Undo requires multiple steps	Database migration rollback, config changes
2	Hard	Cannot undo or very costly	Published content, deleted data, sent messages

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Risk zones

Add the three scores to get a composite score (0–6):

Score	Zone	Action required
🟢 0–2	Safe	Proceed directly. Standard work.
🟡 3–4	Caution	Search UB first (search_brain). Check for precedents, related decisions, or known issues before proceeding.
🔴 5–6	Danger	Full preparation required: search UB + intel_search for external verification + report findings to Captain before acting.

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How to run a Pre-Flight Check

The check takes 30 seconds maximum:

Pre-Flight Check: [task description]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Blast Radius:       [0/1/2] — [reason]
Knowledge Freshness: [0/1/2] — [reason]
Reversibility:       [0/1/2] — [reason]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total: [X]/6  Zone: [🟢/🟡/🔴]
Action: [proceed / search UB / full research + report]

Example: Updating a Docusaurus config

Pre-Flight Check: Modify docusaurus.config.js to add i18n
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Blast Radius:       1 — Affects this repo only (ship-level)
Knowledge Freshness: 1 — Docusaurus 3.x config verified recently
Reversibility:       0 — git checkout restores immediately
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total: 2/6  Zone: 🟢
Action: Proceed directly

Example: Migrating Cloud UB schema

Pre-Flight Check: Add new column to Cloud UB D1 database
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Blast Radius:       2 — Affects all ships (fleet-level, Cloud UB)
Knowledge Freshness: 2 — D1 migration API, need to verify current behavior
Reversibility:       2 — Column changes in production DB are hard to undo
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total: 6/6  Zone: 🔴
Action: search_brain("D1 migration") + intel_search("Cloudflare D1 ALTER TABLE")
        Report to Captain before executing

Example: Running Intel Patrol

Pre-Flight Check: Run intelligence patrol on llm_tech domain
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Blast Radius:       0 — Read-only search, results go to UB staging
Knowledge Freshness: 0 — Patrol system is well-understood
Reversibility:       0 — UB entries can be archived if bad
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total: 0/6  Zone: 🟢
Action: Proceed directly

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Integration with other systems

Work Order system

Pre-Flight Checks should be performed before starting any Work Order. The check result can be noted in the WO acceptance or status update:

WO-2026-0305-001 accepted
PFC: 3/6 🟡 — searched UB for precedents, found ub-xxxx
Proceeding with verified approach

Three WOs were rejected on 2026-03-01 for the same root cause: no Pre-Flight Check was performed. This led to the enforcement principle documented in EGS Compliance.

66s Review

For tasks scoring 🔴 5–6, a Pre-Flight Check often leads to a full 66s Review. The PFC is the quick triage; the 66s Review is the deep analysis.

PFC score	Next step
🟢 0–2	Proceed
🟡 3–4	UB search, then proceed
🔴 5–6	UB search + intel search → consider 66s Review → Captain approval

Tech Freshness

Dimension 2 (Knowledge Freshness) directly connects to the Tech Freshness rule. Any task involving a Danger Zone library automatically scores 2 on this dimension, pushing the total higher and requiring more preparation.

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Enforcement

The Pre-Flight Check is enforced through:

Mechanism	How
Agent behavior rule	CLAUDE.md references PFC as mandatory
EGS compliance check	Per-session checklist item #5
WO rejection	Captain rejects WOs that show no evidence of PFC
Future: automated gate	Hook that blocks WO status transitions without PFC record

The enforcement principle from EGS Compliance: use tools to enforce, not discipline. The goal is to build automated gates that make it impossible to skip the PFC, rather than relying on agents remembering to do it.

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Related pages

Page	Relationship
EGS Compliance	PFC is a critical compliance item
66s Review	Deep review for high-risk tasks (PFC 🔴 zone)
Tech Freshness	Drives the Knowledge Freshness dimension
Agent Intelligence Protocol	AIP §6 Research-Before-Plan triggered by PFC 🟡/🔴
Company Constitution	§13 Knowledge freshness mandate