Practices (Tools, Techniques, and Practices)
A practice is the handbook’s smallest unit: one recurring building situation, the mechanism at stake, and the skill-shaped pattern that tends to resolve it. Modular — apply without reading every strategy — but most share the concepts.
Don’t start here alphabetically. Follow the lifecycle and a project shape (via Architecture), then return for cards you need. Each card’s Why it works / Further reading cite sources listed in Sources & grounding.
Browse this index when you know the pattern; browse a strategy when you know the goal.
By project path (starter draws)
Section titled “By project path (starter draws)”| Path | Draw first |
|---|---|
| Simple website | IDK Now, KISS, Repos (thin CI), Impeccable, Document It, Pulls, Merge/Ship, Tidy Up |
| CLI | + Test It, Research It, Issues, Recon Issue, Check Readiness, repos ci harden |
| Python package | Research It, Test It, Document It, Repos CI/release, Check Readiness, KISS |
| Monorepo | + Repos (architecture/monorepo/secrets ESC), Milestones, Stage/Ship, Observe, Sub-Agents, Agent Slap |
| Compute | KISS, Repos CI/secrets (ESC), Observe, Stage/Ship, Diagnose on prod |
Full catalogue
Section titled “Full catalogue”- Agent Slap: Emergency-fix stupid agent behavior; safely drain dumb workflows.
- Analyze Agents: Read-only autopsy of agent config, traces, failure modes.
- Check Readiness: Is the issue done enough to PR or close?
- Design Agents: Architecture before scaffolding: tools, memory, evals, stop conditions.
- Diagnose Bug: Backend / algo / API root-cause with a repair hypothesis.
- DocSlime: Product docs companion — init, fill, ADR, KISS.
- Document It: Substantive README/runbook/API/docs that match the code.
- Document Work: Repo docs that tracked work needs — then link from issue/PR.
- Fix It: Plan and implement a repair from diagnosis — smallest real fix.
- IDK Now: When you don’t know what to do next: survey, ask, suggest a vision-tied next skill.
- Impeccable (craft): Frontend craft companion — shape, audit, polish UI.
- Issues: Create and shape GitHub issues with critique, narrow, widen, refine, document.
- KISS: Audit complexity; simplify only when warranted; right-size the DAG.
- Merge It: Merge current work to the next integrate target.
- Milestones: Organize release-shaped work; plan and critique milestone scope.
- Observe It: Logs, metrics, traces, analytics — visibility without PII storms.
- Optimize Agents: Measured improvements to agent loops — after analyze; never during thrash.
- ProductFeeling: Emotion-aware product design companion — feeling north star and audits.
- Pulls: Open and improve PRs; status/checks; hand off to merge-it when needed.
- Recon: Tactical scout from git/issue/milestone → next skill in this pack.
- Recon Issue: Deep implementation plan for one issue before coding.
- Refactor It: Improve structure without changing intended behavior.
- Repos: GitHub repo split/combine, monorepo, CI, Pulumi ESC secrets.
- Research It: Evidence-backed options before building; read-only by default.
- Ship It: Send it all the way into production and check that it’s healthy.
- Skill Universe: Inventory DecisionNerd + DocSlime + ProductFeeling + Impeccable + vendored skills.
- Stage It: Land work on staging per repo policy.
- Sub-Agents: Parent orchestrates; bounded parallel explore / sequential mutate.
- Test It: Make behavior provable with the repo’s real test stack.
- Tidy Up: Clean dangling workspaces, artifacts, caches, stale branches — inventory first.
- Troubleshoot App: Live UI / data-plane breakage; reproduce, isolate, evidence.
- Vision / Why: Recover or write why the project exists before picking tools.