northwoods

Clarify the outcome you want - a change in user behavior, not a feature shipped. Use at the start of any work to ground the session in strategic intent.

Devil's advocate. Seek contrary evidence before locking in. Use when about to make a significant decision, when confidence is high but stakes are higher, or when the team is converging too quickly.

Human-led curation of accumulated metis and guardrails. Surface patterns across sessions, propose what to promote, compact, or dismiss. Use after multiple sessions, before a new phase, or when search results feel noisy.

Do the work. Pre-flight, build, detect drift, salvage if needed. Use when you have a clear aim and are ready to implement.

Map what we're optimizing and what constraints we treat as real. Use before jumping to solutions, when hitting repeated blockers, or when patches keep accumulating.

Check work and detect drift before committing. A second opinion that catches misalignment early. Use at natural pause points, before PRs, or when something feels off.

Extract learning before restarting. Code is a draft; learning is the asset. Use when work is drifting, approach has reversed 3+ times, or scope is expanding while "done" keeps fuzzing.

Deliver code to users. Optimize the path from merged code to working install. Use when execution is complete and you need to get changes into users' hands.

Explore candidate solutions before committing. Use when you have a problem statement and need to evaluate approaches - band-aid, optimize, reframe, or redesign.

Project setup. Explore the codebase, ask about strategy and aims, write persistent context to AGENTS.md. Run when starting or when aims shift.