Why do administrations that declare pro-production policy so often behave as if they preferred imports? This article develops the concept of the encoded default (a directional asymmetry written into the configuration of digital administrative architecture and therefore executed automatically, uniformly, and largely invisibly) and asks a single question: under what conditions, and through what mechanism, does the digital architecture of trade administration encode a bias against domestic production, and how can it be re-encoded toward developmental ends? The study is an interpretive, theory-building single-case analysis of Iran, selected as an extreme, analytically revelatory case, using documentary institutional analysis governed by an explicit protocol comparing producer and importer pathways across five dimensions. It integrates digital-era governance, algorithmic governance, new institutional economics, and developmental-state theory, and formalizes a four-step encoding mechanism (rule translation, configuration, automated execution, feedback lock-in) with observable indicators. It documents, with verifiable sources, how Iran’s multi-tier foreign-exchange entitlements, asymmetric licensing pathways, and the mandatory Comprehensive Trade System express the underlying bias across three institutional layers, only the last of which fully satisfies the construct’s necessary conditions. The argument is mechanism-based rather than causal-inferential: documented observations (O1–O3) are labelled throughout and kept distinct from conceptual propositions (P1–P4). The article then specifies developmental govtech as a mid-range, design-oriented governance framework (five re-encoding principles linked explicitly to the findings) together with scope conditions, feasibility constraints, and unintended-consequence risks, positioning Iran comparatively against Estonia, South Korea, Singapore, India, and China.