Mechanical product decisions change as requirements sharpen, suppliers answer, geometry matures, and prototypes fail. Howard keeps the assumptions, calculations, sources, and unresolved questions connected so the argument evolves with the product.
Paste the email, notes, requirements fragment, or test failure. Howard separates stated facts from assumptions and unknowns, normalizes the conditions, and asks only for missing inputs that change the decision.
Howard proposes a small set of plausible system approaches. Each carries its expected benefits, major assumptions, and a kill criterion—the temperature, load, ingress path, cost, process, or evidence gap that would eliminate it.
Howard runs the checks that can be supported from explicit inputs and reviewed evidence. It returns units, conditions, assumptions, references, and limitations beside the result. It does not hide a guessed material property inside a clean-looking answer.
First-order work should reduce uncertainty, not create false certainty. Howard identifies the assumption governing the decision and recommends the next analysis, supplier question, or physical test needed to close it.
When a chamber result, prototype measurement, supplier update, or field failure contradicts the model, Howard records what changed and recomputes the affected chain. Rev B starts from evidence, not from a blank chat.
Howard does not need to pretend it authors production geometry or replaces FEA and CFD. It helps define the problem, sanity-check the model, identify the governing uncertainty, and preserve the rationale around those tools.