---
title: Mandatory Move
description: "### Definition Cut candidate. Considered and rejected during the workshop that locked [Law of Constant Motion]. Proposed meaning: every operational moment requires a forward decision. Rejected as ambiguous -- move what, move where -- in favor of the locked family:…"
url: "https://kb.jeffreysummers.com/docs/mandatory-move/"
updated: "2026-08-13"
category: "The Operator's Dictionary"
---

# Mandatory Move

### Definition

Cut candidate. Considered and rejected during the workshop that locked [Law of Constant Motion]. Proposed meaning: every operational moment requires a forward decision. Rejected as ambiguous -- move what, move where -- in favor of the locked family: [Law of Constant Motion] as canonical IP, "no neutral" as the in-prose teaching phrase, and "forward or falling" as the diagnostic phrase.

### Explanation

The workshop's own read on this cut is worth preserving: the five candidates considered together -- [Constant Motion], [No Neutral], [Two-Direction Rule], [Forward Or Falling], and [Mandatory Move] -- were never five competitors for one slot, they were three roles in one family plus two redundant cuts. [Mandatory Move] lost because it didn't specify what was moving or where, which made it unusable as a standalone diagnostic. See [Law of Constant Motion] for the term that won the slot.