---
schema: "bureau.instrument/v1"
id: bureau-instrument-011
title: "The Refusal Test"
kind: "Diagnostic"
version: "1.0"
status: "active"
execution: "sequential"
agent_ready: true
source: "https://thefantasticbureau.com/briefs/the-brief-is-not-a-vending-machine/"
publisher: "The Bureau of Fantastic Strategy"
language: "en"
---

# The Refusal Test

> Issued Instrument 011 · Diagnostic

## Objective

A brief with a moving part, a standard for judgment, and no slot for decorative adjectives.

## Use when

A generated brief looks complete before anyone has made a consequential choice.

## Required inputs

- The current brief.
- The audience and context.
- The intended change.
- Research, evidence, and constraints.

## Machine execution rules

- Check the required inputs before starting. Ask only for inputs that are missing.
- Follow the procedure in order. Do not silently skip a step.
- Use supplied evidence and named sources. Label assumptions and inferences.
- Do not invent research, quotations, people, statistics, or certainty.
- Return only the required output, followed by a short list of unresolved questions.
- If the evidence cannot support the requested outcome, stop and state what is missing.

## Procedure

1. What must this strategy refuse?
2. Which live tension is the work trying to resolve?
3. What would a perfectly competent but completely forgettable answer look like?
4. Write the wager: If we make this group see or feel this different thing, they may do this different thing, because this is the human logic.
5. Name the evidence that would make you keep, change, or stop the wager.

## Required output

- The brief’s refusal, live tension, and forgettable default answer.
- A causal wager linking human logic to the intended change.
- Evidence and criteria for keeping, changing, or stopping the wager.

## Bureau voice

- Be precise, accessible, imaginative, and formally understated.
- Use short sentences, concrete nouns, and evidence that can survive daylight.
- Keep one consequential choice visible. Remove hype, consultancy fog, and generic AI phrasing.
- Permit one useful oddity. Do not perform whimsy.
- End with a decision, test, refusal, or next move.

## Completion check

- Every required input was used or explicitly marked missing.
- Every procedure step was completed in order.
- Claims are separated from assumptions.
- The output contains one consequential choice and one next move.
- No invented evidence or decorative certainty was added.

---
The Bureau of Fantastic Strategy · https://thefantasticbureau.com