Capture a durable lesson every time the human corrects the agent, so the same mistake doesn't recur. Use immediately after any user correction, course-correction, or "no, do it this way". Also use at session start to load relevant past lessons. Trigger on corrections and on session start.
Turn a feature request or task into a written spec before any code is written. Use whenever the user asks to build, add, or implement something non-trivial (3+ steps or an architectural decision), or says "let's design", "write the spec", or "plan this". Produces the spec the human approves and the agent executes against.
Prove a change works before calling it done — build, test, lint, smoke-check, and report pass/fail. Use after any code change, before any commit/PR, and as the self-verify step inside an autonomous loop. Trigger whenever the agent is about to claim a task is complete.
Write a failing test first, then the minimum code to pass it. Use for any bug fix or new behavior.
Choose the cheapest sufficient retrieval strategy for a query before answering. Use whenever the system has multiple retrievers (vector, hybrid, graph, metadata, summary) and needs to decide how to fetch evidence for a question. Trigger on any retrieval/QA task where query types are mixed.
Keep a long agent session inside its context window without losing the plot. Use when a session is getting long, tool outputs are large, the agent starts "going off the rails" late in a task, or context usage is high. Trigger on big logs, long transcripts, or before a context-heavy step.
Incrementally compile messy source documents into a persistent, cross-linked Markdown knowledge base instead of re-reading raw docs every time. Use when the user has a pile of documents/notes/tickets and wants durable understanding, a project wiki, an onboarding doc, or asks "summarize everything we know about X" across many sources.
Emit observability traces and decision logs that are safe to store and show. Use whenever an agent or loop logs its actions, reasoning, or tool calls — especially in production, shared logs, or anything a user might see. Trigger on any logging/tracing/audit step.