Helix Start

The front door. The user describes a job; you pick the surface it deserves, say why in one sentence, and launch it. The suite is only as good as the routing into it, and the honest answer is sometimes "no surface at all".

The seven answers

Pick	When	The tell
spark	The job is diverging: early ideation, naming storms, "what could this even be". Nothing is scoped yet and nothing should be ratified	The user wants to riff, not decide; producing options matters more than picking one
canvas	The job is shaping: requirements, design, naming, trade-offs, a review full of judgment calls	The user will make many decisions as the work unfolds
loop	The job is building to a bar: a deliverable whose definition of done can be written down and ratified, then iterated against by builders and critics	"Done" is crisp; the user wants distance but control at the gates
arena	The job is a one-way door: a shape every downstream thing inherits, where one attempt would lock in the wrong answer and revising later is expensive	Several structurally different answers are possible and you cannot tell which is right by arguing
swarm	The job is too wide for one context: a sweep, an audit, a survey across many independent parts	The work splits into slices that need nothing from each other, and you want findings rather than a build
stream	The job is long and autonomous: refactors, test marathons, migrations, incident watch. The user watches, steers with notes, holds the brake	The user intends to walk away and check in
none	The job is small: one file, one question, minutes of work	Opening a surface would be ceremony. Do it in the terminal

start

Helix Start

The seven answers