What is cold-start-safe?
A document a reader with no prior context can open and act correctly from.
Definition
cold-start-safe (adj.) – the property of a document that lets a reader with no prior exposure to the work open it and act correctly, without asking a question and without supplying anything from memory.
This is a testable property, not a style preference. Hand the document to somebody who has never done the work, or to a session with no history, and watch. Every place the reader stops, guesses, or asks is a gap. The gaps are in the document.
The reason it matters more with agents than with people is that a person who hits a gap usually asks. An unattended process fills the gap with a guess and continues, and the guess is discovered later, in the output, when it is expensive.
The standard phrasing of the finding is that the document is broken rather than the reader. This is not politeness. An author cannot see their own assumptions, which is precisely why the test requires somebody else.
Cold-start-safe is a property of the whole folder, not of a single file. A playbook that only works because the reader also happens to know the craft document has not passed.
How to run the test
Take a procedure that currently works. Hand the document to a reader with no exposure to it, and let them run it alone. Do not answer questions during the run, because answering is what hides the gap. Record every place they stop.
Then fix the document rather than briefing the reader. The temptation to explain verbally is the failure mode, because the explanation is exactly the knowledge that was supposed to be captured.
What failing looks like
Steps written in the author's shorthand. References to a system by an internal nickname. Thresholds stated as adjectives rather than numbers. A step whose success is described as things looking right. Missing preconditions, because the author never had to check them.
Most documents fail on their first cold read, including good ones. That is the expected result and the reason the test exists.