Understand the Method
Starter turns intent into written authority, bounded work, evidence and human judgment. Its eleven-step method starts with an idea and insights, develops a brief and architecture, establishes repository policies, creates a phased plan, decomposes consequential prerequisites when needed, executes the selected development/review loop, records acceptance and lessons, supports human evaluation, and adjusts the remaining plan as evidence changes.
Put decisions in their owning surface
Rules that matter across sessions belong in repository authority rather than one agent's memory. Briefs explain the design; policies prescribe behavior; plans refine authorized work. Fix an ambiguity at its owner. Keep canonical sources and thin harness mirrors so the rule has one maintained home.
Ask evidence to prove the actual claim
A count, label or successful command is often a proxy for the property you care about. Name the property and the proxy, consider innocent triggers, and ask whether the proxy could reverse the conclusion. Re-read the original artifact before characterizing it. Unknown measurements remain unknown.
Candidate-bound review answers whether the inspected implementation satisfies its contract. The full handoff gate answers whether the exact delivered tree passes its executable checks. Neither replaces human evaluation.
Keep progress monotonic
Hold authorized scope fixed. Implement unblocked work and defer tangents explicitly. Prefer a deterministic script for exact repeatable work and contextual judgment for decisions. Introduce an abstraction for a present use, rather than for an imagined future consumer.
Learn from surprises
Rule One starts with the observed divergence and diagnoses before prescribing a rule. Separate containment, correction and prevention. Persist a reusable lesson at the narrowest existing cross-harness authority; keep unsettled learning provisional. The operator decides when lessons graduate into rules.
Before a stable external release, replace a wrong shape and update all callers, fixtures and documentation together. Transitional compatibility paths add a second system to maintain before the first has shipped.
Keep authority and judgment with the operator
Routine gate-proved delivery is authorized; destructive Git actions and consequential decisions remain the operator's. Availability does not create authority. Delegation can carry existing permission but cannot invent it. Clear reports lead with the consequence and preserve the evidence needed to assess it.