# Restate the question with the choices

Tap options never travel alone. Every re-shown choice carries the plain-text question it answers, or the human is deciding blind.

From the [Tips & tricks](../index.md#tips) section of [The Muse Field Guide](../index.md).

## The move

Tap options never travel alone. Every re-presented choice carries the plain-text question it answers.

## When to use it

Whenever choices are shown or re-shown. It sounds trivial until a widget fails to render or a conversation compacts, and the human is staring at three buttons with no idea what they decide.

## Steps

1. Write the question in plain text, in the message.
2. Attach the options to that same message.
3. On any re-show, repeat the question verbatim with the options.
4. Never use internal labels the human has not seen defined.

## The gotcha

The household's name for options without their question is "completely unhelpful." Internal shorthand has the same failure mode: a label that makes sense inside the machinery can mean nothing to the person being asked.

## Where this came from

After one such failure, the fix became a standing rule: options and question are always paired.

Deep dive: [Practices and tips: the resource core](../deep-dives/practices.md)

Related resources: [One question, at the end](one-question-at-a-time.md), [The approval ladder](the-approval-ladder.md)

Canonical page: https://www.niclydon.io/muse/items/restate-the-question.html