Designers increasingly specify textiles through functional behavior—compression, elasticity, texture—while industrial knitting systems require detailed, machine-specific instructions. This translation gap stems from treating construction dependencies as friction to eliminate rather than parameters to design. This work-in-progress proposes a probe-based, construction-aware functional taxonomy as an intermediate layer between designer intent and industrial fabrication. Using benchmark knit swatches from an industrial archive, we treat fabrication not as a pipeline to be optimized but as a site of inquiry. Limited re-knitting experiments are used to study surface thresholds and how behaviors are preserved, altered, or lost when construction conditions change. Rather than eliminating divergence, these probes make construction dependencies legible. By making construction explicit within functional descriptions, this approach supports designers in specifying what a textile should do while remaining grounded in how it is made, and informs the design of future tools that privilege feedback and negotiation over automation.
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