The Reading Process

 INPUTS                          TRAVERSAL                        OUTPUT
 ──────                          ─────────                        ──────

 Codebase ──┐
 Runbooks ──┤    ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐
 Metrics  ──┼───►│ Identify  │──►│ Ask the 7│──►│ Name the │
 Logs     ──┤    │ Archetype │   │ Review   │   │ Tradeoffs│
 People   ──┘    │ (F6)      │   │ Questions│   │ (F4)     │
                 └──────────┘   │ (F5)     │   └────┬─────┘
                      │         └──────────┘        │
                      │              │              ▼
                      │              │         ┌──────────┐
                      │              │         │ Map the   │──► Documented
                      │              │         │ Failure   │    Findings
                      │              │         │ Modes(F3) │
                      │              │         └──────────┘
                      │              │              │
                      ▼              ▼              ▼
                 ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
                 │         HYPOTHESIS FORMED            │
                 │  "I think this is FM5 at the         │
                 │   payment dependency boundary"       │
                 └─────────────────────────────────────┘

 FAILURE PATH: Start at error log → depth-first on symptoms
 → detailed understanding of wrong layer → no hypothesis
 after 90 minutes → still reading code at 3am

The traversal moves from category to structure to risk — not from symptom to fix. Starting at the archetype gives a prior about what the system probably looks like; the seven review questions test that prior against reality; the failure mode enumeration converts the tested model into actionable hypotheses. Engineers who reverse this order — starting at the log line and working outward — build detailed knowledge of the wrong layer while the actual failure continues.