gilfoyle

Replaces brainstorming for feature design. Produces a design where every claim is paired with an experiment that would prove it wrong, and the cheapest such experiment runs before the design is approved. Refuses to run until prove-it-prototype has produced agreement between probe and oracle.

REQUIRED before prove-it-prototype when a feature request originates from a human in natural language. Interrogates the requester one question at a time until every vague noun is resolved, every success criterion is measurable, every edge case has an explicit decision, every "TBD" is closed, and the requester has signed off in their own words. Refuses to proceed until the artifact has zero hand-waving.

REQUIRED before any design or plan when adding a feature to a system you did not personally write. Build a 30-50 line probe that produces the proposed feature's output against the real codebase, define an independent oracle that computes the same answer a different way, and refuse to proceed until probe and oracle agree.

Replaces executing-plans. Executes slices one at a time. After each slice, runs the slice's stress fixture AND the prove-it-prototype oracle against the binary AND the budget check. If any of those fail, STOPS and surfaces the drift to the user. Treats the plan as a hypothesis, not a contract.

Use when responding to PR review feedback (human or bot) before applying any changes. Treats each finding as a hypothesis to verify, not an instruction to follow. Decides per finding whether the bug claim is real AND whether the proposed fix is right AND whether to accept, modify, or reject. Refuses to apply changes without per-finding verification.

Replaces writing-plans. Decomposes a falsifiable design into small slices, each with mandatory complexity budget, scale budget, stress fixture, and oracle. Refuses to run until falsifiable-design has produced an approved design with a passing cheapest-falsifier.

A scoped TDD discipline. Use for unit tests inside a slice during checkpointed-build. Adds two mandatory steps beyond GREEN — BUDGET and ORACLE — and treats TDD as one tool in a larger spiral, not the whole methodology.