Principles vs. Practices

LDD is built on three principles that shouldn't change:

• The Learning Loop is the Atom. The smallest unit of work is a complete learning cycle. Progress happens when you learn from users, not when you ship features.
• Users Set the Absorption Ceiling. The pace of learning is capped by how much change humans can absorb, not by how fast an AI can ship.
• Agents Drift When Context Is Rebuilt. Incremental builds force agents to reconstruct context on every slice, and each reconstruction introduces subtle drift.

But the practices (how you run loops, how often, what tools you use) should adapt to your context. A regulated financial services company needs different traceability practices than a solo builder shipping a SaaS app. A ten-person product team needs different cadence than a two-person startup. LDD should flex to fit.