prototype

name	prototype
description	Build a throwaway prototype to answer a design question. Use when the user wants to sanity-check whether a state model or logic feels right, explore what a UI should look like, or says prototype or /prototype.
disable-model-invocation	true

Prototype

A prototype is throwaway code that answers a question. The question decides the shape.

Pick a branch

Identify which question is being answered — from the user's prompt, the surrounding code, or by asking if the user is around:

• "Does this logic / state model feel right?" → LOGIC.md. Build a tiny interactive terminal app that pushes the state machine through cases that are hard to reason about on paper.
• "What should this look like?" → UI.md. Generate several radically different UI variations on a single route, switchable via a URL search param and a floating bottom bar.

The two branches produce very different artifacts — getting this wrong wastes the whole prototype. If the question is genuinely ambiguous and the user isn't reachable, default to whichever branch better matches the surrounding code (a backend module → logic; a page or component → UI) and state the assumption at the top of the prototype.

Rules that apply to both

1. Throwaway from day one, and clearly marked as such. Prefer .scratch/ for homelab throwaways. If the prototype must sit next to production code for context, name it so a casual reader sees it is not production.
2. One command to run. Whatever the project's existing task runner supports — uv run, python, pnpm, etc. The user must be able to start it without thinking.
3. No persistence by default. State lives in memory. If the question explicitly involves a database, hit a scratch DB or a local file with a clear "PROTOTYPE — wipe me" name.
4. Skip the polish. No tests, no error handling beyond what makes the prototype runnable, no abstractions.
5. Surface the state. After every action (logic) or on every variant switch (UI), print or render the full relevant state.
6. Capture it when done. Fold any validated decision into the real code. Capture the verdict (question + answer) on the related issue or in chat. Prefer leaving throwaway code under .scratch/ (gitignored) rather than opening a branch — this repo usually works on the workspace root without feature branches.