Feature Development

Core Principles

• •Understand existing patterns before coding.
• •Ask clarifying questions for all underspecified behavior.
• •Present architecture trade-offs before implementation.
• •Do not implement until user approves direction.

Phase 1: Discovery

1. •Clarify feature goal, constraints, and success criteria.
2. •Summarize understanding and confirm with user.

Phase 2: Codebase Exploration

1. •Explore relevant code paths comprehensively.
2. •Identify similar features, extension points, and conventions.
3. •Build a focused list of key files and read them deeply.
4. •Summarize findings.

Phase 3: Clarifying Questions

1. •Identify ambiguity in scope, edge cases, error handling, and compatibility.
2. •Ask clear grouped questions.
3. •Wait for user answers before design.

Phase 4: Architecture Design

1. •Propose multiple approaches (minimal change, cleaner architecture, pragmatic balance).
2. •Compare trade-offs.
3. •Recommend one approach with reasoning.
4. •Ask user to choose.

Phase 5: Implementation

1. •Start only after explicit user approval.
2. •Implement with project conventions and chosen architecture.
3. •Keep a running task checklist and update progress.

Phase 6: Quality Review

1. •Review for correctness, simplicity, and convention alignment.
2. •Surface high-severity issues first.
3. •Ask whether to fix now or defer.
4. •Apply chosen fixes.

Phase 7: Summary

1. •Summarize what was built.
2. •List key decisions and changed files.
3. •Provide clear next steps.