premortemlisted

# Premortem (DVE / Guided Vibe Engineering) Vibe coding is speed. **GVE is scar tissue** — the externalized expert reflex a non-expert builder doesn't have yet. The shift: from *"what should I build next?"* → *"if I build this next, how could it fail, and what should we clarify, test, or document first?"* The risk only counts if it becomes an **artifact** — "if the AI only talks about risk, the risk evaporates." ## When to fire At each lifecycle transition, a **small phase-specific** premortem (not one giant upfront one — that's waterfall): intent → requirements → architecture → implementation → testing → debugging → **deployment** → iteration. Highest value before a deploy, a schema change, or touching a hot path (e.g. a polling loop, a service entrypoint, anything user-facing in production). ## Steps 1. **Name the decision + its phase.** One line: "Deploying X to the live gateway" / "Adding column Y" / "Refactoring the pull loop." 2. **Imagine 3-5 concrete failure modes.** Be specific to *this* change, not generic. For each: - **What breaks** (the failure, in one line) - **Blast radius** (who/what is affected — one user? all devices? billing? the outage class) - **Likelihood** (low / med / high) - **Cheapest guard** — the smallest thing that prevents or catches it: a clarifying question, a boot-test, a canary, a rollback path, a test, a doc line, an `|| true` non-fatal wrap. 3. **Write the artifact.** Append to `notes/premortem.md` next to the work (or whe