The renderer moving a result toward convention while still returning a pass. Drift is not refusal: shorts lengthen, scale shrinks, a specified detail is quietly generalised, and everything is reported as successful. It is the slow, polite betrayal of a specification.

Prompt Engineering Application

In systems: A pipeline that reports success while altering the specification it was given

In behavior: Verifying the pass rather than the fidelity

In relationship: Being told it worked while the thing itself has quietly changed

Shape What it is

Returned pass — the pipeline reports success.
Changed detail — the specification was altered without notice.
Convention as attractor — results slide toward the ordinary.

Test: If the specification can be checked and the drift named, it was drift rather than refusal.

Motion How it moves

Specify → Render → Drift → Report Success

Specify — a precise requirement is given.
Render — the system produces a result.
Drift — an element slides toward convention.
Report — success is declared anyway.

Trajectory: from precise request → conventional result → false success.

Recursions The same pattern at two scales

Lengthened hem — a specified edge quietly moved.
Reduced scale — size shaved toward the ordinary.
Generalised detail — a distinctive feature made generic.

Vast

Standards drift — specifications eroding across iterations.
Telephone game — a message changing as it is passed.
Institutional entropy — conventions slowly overriding intent.

Ethics What it refuses

Success without fidelity — accepting a pass as proof.
Unnamed alteration — changing a specification silently.
Resignation — treating drift as unavoidable rather than checkable.

Check the specification, not the status code.

Practices

Hold the spec — keep the original requirement visible beside the result.
Diff — name each element that moved.
Re-verify — confirm fidelity rather than accepting a pass.
Log drift — record it so patterns become visible.