plan-before-buildlisted

# Plan before you build For anything big or unclear, design first. This is how you scale effort up appropriately instead of diving into code and discovering the shape halfway through. ## 1. Understand (brainstorm the design) - Pin the purpose, the constraints, and what success looks like. - Ask the user ONE question at a time, multiple-choice when you can, until the goal is clear. - Propose 2-3 competing approaches with trade-offs before settling on one. - Get agreement on the approach BEFORE writing implementation code (hard gate). ## 2. Write the plan - Header: the goal, the chosen approach, the files created/modified, global constraints. - Break the work into small steps, each one action: write test -> see it fail -> implement -> see it pass -> move on. Size each step so it can be reviewed or dropped on its own. - No placeholders: every step names the real change and the expected result, never "add error handling here". - Assume the implementer knows the craft but NOT this codebase - be concrete. ## 3. Keep state where it belongs Record the plan and progress in the project's own TODO / ledger (the end-of-task ritual), not a parallel notes tree, so it rides the normal workflow.