As the field of asymmetric catalysis advances through the continuous discovery of new highly enantioselective reactions, there has been increased attention to the crucial importance of generality, either across substrates of varying structure within the same reaction, or across different reactions promoted effectively by the same socalled "privileged" catalyst class. 2 Systems displaying either of those two types of generality are often most broadly impactful, the former in the context of new synthetic applications, and the latter in the context of new reaction development. Indeed, the asymmetric catalytic reactions with broad substrate scope and privileged chiral catalyst classes with applications in mechanistically diverse contexts that have been identified have had transformative effects on the way asymmetric synthesis is performed. While the identification of such general chiral catalyst systems is clearly desirable, it has thus far relied largely on empirical discoveries and retrospective analysis. The development of increasingly sophisticated highthroughput screening methods, including those aimed directly at identification of general systems, will doubtlessly accelerate the pace of those discoveries. In contrast, the application of mechanistic principles to the discovery of general asymmetric catalytic systems remains challenging: beyond relatively simple shapeguided principles such as C2 symmetry in ligand design and the related quadrant model in transition state analysis, 6,7 coherent principles for discovering new general catalysts or reactions remain elusive.