reference-engine
YOU MUST LOCATE A REFERENCE BEFORE YOU BUILD. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Reference Engine: The Universal Reference-First System
Overview
Every domain has thousands of hours of professional engineering already completed. APIs have been designed, schemas have been refined, pipelines have been battle-tested, patterns have been hardened. Leveraging them as your reference is not laziness — it is engineering intelligence.
Core principle: Before building ANYTHING, locate the best existing reference. Extract its patterns. Build on proven foundations, not assumptions.
No exceptions. No workarounds. No shortcuts.
The Prime Directive
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fault-diagnosis
Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes
15task-planning
Use when you have a spec or requirements for a multi-step task, before touching code
15agent-messaging
Use when dispatching subagents, composing prompts for teammates, structuring handoff reports, or managing context boundaries between agents. Covers both subagent prompts and team-level messaging.
15intent-discovery
Use when starting any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements, and design before implementation.
15quality-enforcement
Use when preparing code for commit, PR, or merge - covers linting, type safety, bundle budgets, coverage thresholds, complexity limits, dependency audit, and dead code detection
14pattern-matching
Use when contributing code to an existing project - guarantees that every new line mirrors the established conventions, naming schemes, architectural layering, directory layout, and stylistic choices already present in the codebase rather than drifting toward generic AI defaults
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