Modern systems—technical, organizational, and institutional—often specify forward execution in detail while leaving boundary behaviors underdescribed. “Engineering seams” are the points where explanation thins: stopping behavior is implicit, ambiguity handling is unclear, and non-action is treated as a default rather than an outcome. This paper introduces Engineering Seams as an observational method for recognizing these unresolved interfaces. It treats silence, delay, and absence as analyzable system outputs, not as mere gaps in documentation. The work does not claim that the systems examined are unsafe, that designers are negligent, or that automation is inappropriate. It does not prescribe fixes. Its contribution is a disciplined way to detect where constraints stop justifying themselves and where optimization risks becoming repetition. The intended outcome is not agreement or adoption, but visibility—a clearer understanding of where responsibility shifts when systems cannot explain why they acted, withheld, or remained silent.
David Forbes (Tue,) studied this question.