Decide when "good enough" is actually good enough, not an excuse to stop early
Perfectionism and genuine good judgment about when to stop feel identical from the inside.
- Use it for
- Anyone unsure whether to keep refining something or ship/finish it as-is.
Deciding whether something is done enough to ship is genuinely hard to self-assess, because both stopping too early (rushing, cutting corners) and stopping too late (perfectionism, diminishing returns) feel like reasonable caution from the inside. The useful question isn't "does it feel done," it's whether the specific remaining improvements are worth more than what continuing to work costs — in time, in delay, in opportunity.
When not to use this
If there's a hard external deadline or quality bar that settles the question already, this reflection is unnecessary — just meet the actual requirement. This is for when the stopping point is genuinely a judgment call.
Did this work?
You have a specific, defensible reason to stop or continue — not a vague feeling that "it could still be better" either way.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.