Reachability Is the Whole Game

Here is the failure mode that will bite you, and it is not the one you are expecting.

You will not lose content. You will lose the route to it.

A file that nothing names is a file that does not exist. It sits there, perfectly written, fully valid, passing every check — and the GM never opens it because nothing ever told it to. Ten mechanics in this project, 385 KB of genuinely good writing, sat unreachable for months. Every automated check reported green the entire time.

Why it happens

Because writing the thing feels like the work, and wiring it feels like admin. It is the reverse. The wiring is the work. The writing is the easy part and you will do it enthusiastically at 1am; the wiring is the part you skip because you are tired and you will "do it tomorrow".

The three routes in

THE LADDER NAMES IT     pinned, so the name is always present. Ten
                        tokens. The strongest route there is.
A CARD NAMES IT         in its Deep: footer, or inline. Loads when
                        that card loads.
A TRIGGER FIRES IT      on a phase, gated by its own opening line.
                        Twenty slots total, and they are full.

Searchable is not a route. It means findable if the GM goes looking, and the GM does not go looking for things it does not know exist.

The test, and it takes ten seconds

For anything you add, finish this sentence: "The GM will read this when ______."

If you cannot fill the blank with something specific — a named card, a phase, a trigger condition — you have not added a mechanic. You have added a document.

And the other half

Written but never read. A field the GM dutifully fills that no instruction ever consults. Ask the mirror question of every field you add: what routinely reads this? If nothing does, you have built a very tidy dead end.