Build anything non‑trivial in seven steps

Grill the idea, plan, tickets, one agent per ticket, prove it, ship.

Every shortcut I’ve tried skipped one of these, and I paid a week later.

  1. Grill the idea. The agent restates the ask, then asks hard questions until the scope holds.
  2. Validate the plan. Parallel reviewers check facts and feasibility; one only attacks the premise.
  3. Cut tickets. Thin slices, each shippable alone.
  4. One fresh agent per ticket. Only one writes to the repo at a time.
  5. Prove it works. “Tests pass” from an agent is a claim; I run the command and load the page.
  6. Run a QA loop. Read-only reviewers check the diff; one pass fixes their findings.
  7. Ship with a README runbook, fact-checked against the source.

Skip it for a one-line fix.