Every system I build will eventually be maintained by someone I've never met, a developer hired years later, an IT officer inheriting it mid-tenure. Designing for that person changes the decisions.
It means boring over clever: explicit names, no magic, comments that explain why rather than what. It means the README assumes zero context and the deploy path is documented, not tribal.
The test is empathy at a distance: could someone cold-open this codebase and make a safe change in a day? If yes, the system will outlive its author. If no, it's a liability with a UI.
