Orientation
When the room is on fire, look before you pour. Orientation is the prerequisite for every strategy in this handbook: recover why the project exists, name what’s actually burning, and inventory which skills are already in the room.
Skip orientation and you get productive-looking motion that doesn’t serve the vision — agent thrash, tidy PRs for the wrong product, docs that describe a ghost.
flowchart LR A[Vision / why] --> B[Situation] B --> C[Skill universe] C --> D[Achievable goal] D --> E[Strategy + practice]- Vision and Why — the dish you’re cooking; confidence low/med/high
- Situation Assessment — env, repo, git, what’s on fire vs smoke
- Skill Universe — DecisionNerd pack + DocSlime + ProductFeeling + Impeccable + vendored
Also decide language early (Python / TypeScript / Rust; Kotlin, Swift, Godot only when the platform requires it). For web, decide framework (Next/React on Vercel vs Starlight for docs).
Fast path
Section titled “Fast path”Run idk-now (full) or idk-now quick. For tactical git/issue scope only, use recon — but if you’re lost, prefer idk-now.
Then pick a project path (website → CLI → monorepo) so you don’t load every practice at once.
Agent skill
Section titled “Agent skill”| To… | Run |
|---|---|
| Full orient + questions + next step | idk-now |
| Short pass | idk-now quick |
| Vision-only | idk-now vision |
| List skills on hand | idk-now skills |
| Tactical scout (not lost) | recon / recon repo / recon issue |