Preflight

Meta — Methodology. Surface your assumptions, then lock down success criteria before building.

Core Question: "What would I silently get wrong if I just started coding?"

Critical Gates — Read First

1. Never skip Phase 1 for non-trivial tasks — even if the user says "just build it," hidden assumptions are the #1 cause of rework. Ask the questions.
2. FAILURE clauses are the key innovation — they prevent the builder from taking shortcuts they'd otherwise rationalize. Every contract MUST have specific failure conditions.
3. 5 questions, not 20 — the constraint forces prioritization. Ask the questions where a different answer would MOST change your approach.
4. Wait for answers before Phase 2 — never generate the contract from assumptions alone.

Philosophy

The most expensive agent failures are silent assumption failures — confidently building the wrong thing because you assumed REST when they meant GraphQL, or assumed a new file when they wanted to extend an existing one. Preflight makes assumptions visible and fixable before they're expensive.

The FAILURE clause front-loads reasoning about what "done" means. Without it, agents silently cut corners they'd avoid if failure modes were explicit.