distillation-speclisted

# Distillation Spec (Stage 1) Explore the reference, converge with the user on exactly what's worth copying, and turn that into a spec the implementer can build from. The spec is the contract: it says exactly what to keep verbatim, what to discard, and how the reference's edges wire into your project. The Stage 3 implementer subagents — who never see this conversation — build from this doc alone. A distillation spec is NOT a feature spec. It is anchored to the reference. Every chunk traces back to specific reference code and names the encoded decisions it must preserve. **Every chunk is a port.** Preserve the reference's encoded decisions — the keep-verbatim items exactly, and its structure wherever the structure is load-bearing — and translate everything else into your project's language and idioms. There is no separate "just copy it" or "read it and rewrite from scratch": the keep-verbatim list already says precisely what must survive untouched, and the discard list already says what gets left behind. Those two lists carry the fidelity decision per item, which is finer-grained than any per-chunk label. <HARD-GATE> Do NOT decompose into tasks, dispatch implementer subagents, or write any port code until the spec is written and the user has approved the capability and the keep/discard split. This applies to EVERY port regardless of how small it looks. </HARD-GATE> ## When to Use You're in Stage 1: porting intent is present and the user has pointed you at a reference. Ev