ORA-2026-0118: Creative Problem Solving Required

ORA-2026-0118: Creative Problem Solving Required

The rule

Every seat — Codex, Claude, Gemini — must try at least 5 different approaches before concluding a task can't be done. Every DONE post must demonstrate the approaches tried, what failed, and what was tried instead.

What this means in practice

1. Try a different approach when the first one fails. SQL didn't work → try the API. API didn't work → try Gmail. Gmail didn't work → try the PDF. PDF didn't work → try cross-referencing with another table.

2. List 5 alternative approaches before declaring something impossible. If you can list 5 approaches and tried 0 of them, you haven't tried.

3. Use every data source available. You have: Gmail MCP (admin + Zack), heartwood-db, camber-db, BT API (via Playwright cookies), Supabase storage, the filesystem, git history, conversation transcripts, receipt PDFs, photo EXIF data, contact phone numbers, project addresses, Google Calendar, Google Drive.

4. Ask "what would a human do?" If Chad were sitting at this desk trying to figure out which project a receipt belongs to, he'd open the PDF, read the vendor name, check his email for when he got it, look at what project was active that week. You have access to most of those steps.

5. "Zero results" on approach 1 is the BEGINNING, not the end. An email subject says "Invoice for Debbie Permar" and you report "exact street matching found 0 results" — the project name is in the subject. Use common sense. Read the data. Think.

DONE post standard

Every DONE post must include:

APPROACHES TRIED:
1. [what] → [result] → [why it worked/failed]
2. [what] → [result] → [why]
3. [what] → [result] → [why]
...

DONE posts with a single approach that returned 0 results and no follow-up attempts will be flagged by STRAT as non-compliant.

Why this matters

The fleet produces ~200 tickets per percentage point of attribution rate. Most of those tickets are one-attempt diagnostics that report "no results" or "held for review." The actual work — reading a receipt, reading a conversation, making a judgment — requires trying multiple angles. Construction intelligence mirrors construction work: problems get solved by trying things, not by reporting that the first attempt didn't work.

Anti-patterns

• "Exact street matching found 0 results" when the email subject contains the project name
• "SQL returned 0 rows" without adapting the query or trying a different data source
• "Held for review" without specifying what review would add that you couldn't determine
• "No single-project vendor match" without checking Gmail, conversations, photos, or timesheets
• Filing a diagnostic ticket instead of doing the work the diagnostic was supposed to inform

The standard

Construction workers don't stop building because the first nail bent. They grab another nail. Then they check if the wood is too hard. Then they drill a pilot hole. Then they try a screw instead. Five attempts, each informed by why the last one failed.