| name | ship-small |
| description | Ship the smallest change that delivers value, keep the tree releasable at every step, and let working software drive the next decision. |
| source | zerops-curated |
| version | 1 |
Ship small
Big-bang changes hide risk; small shipped steps expose it early.
- Find the smallest change that delivers observable value — one behavior a user (or the next developer) can see working. If a task needs a week, find the two-day core that proves it.
- Keep every commit releasable: it compiles, tests pass, the feature set is coherent. Half-finished states hide behind interfaces, not behind broken builds.
- Integrate continuously — merge/rebase small and often; a long-lived branch is a debt with compound interest.
- Prefer working software over speculative structure: build the abstraction when the second caller arrives, not before. Delete code you "might need later" — version control remembers it.
- Let feedback steer: after each shipped slice, look at what it taught you (a failing assumption, a slow query, a confused user) and re-plan the next slice from evidence, not from the original guess.
- When a step balloons, split it — a growing diff is a signal to cut scope, never to push harder.
