Software engineering lifecycle

Connect user intent, approved expectations, delivery work, implementation evidence, and current knowledge. Write concise practitioner prose: concrete behavior, decisions, and evidence, with no filler or repeated explanations. Explain each fact in its authoritative home and link elsewhere.

Start here

1. Inspect repository instructions, existing documents, source/tests, and relevant remote work. Establish requested scope and authorization; never overwrite unread content. Apply the context rule below at every stage and whenever new uncertainty appears.
2. Read lifecycle for stage boundaries and conventions before writing documents or GitHub drafts.
3. Load only the references/templates needed below. Keep required sections; remove irrelevant optional ones. Preserve important rules, risks, and evidence rather than targeting a fixed length.
4. Reuse explicit authorization. Seek approval for significant new requirement/architecture changes outside it; continue independent authorized work.
5. Run documentation validation for canonical layouts or established checks otherwise. Report actual verification, unknowns, and unfinished work.

Missing context at any stage

First investigate facts available in the conversation, repository, tests, documentation, and connected tools. When missing context still requires a user decision, read and use the installed grilling skill. grill-me is its invocation alias in the current installation; follow the alias to the underlying skill instead of maintaining a second interview procedure here. This applies throughout discovery, planning, implementation, verification, documentation, and finalization, without requiring the user to invoke grilling again.

Use the skill's decision tree and recommendations, asking one question at a time as requested by the user. Keep the interview within the current scope; identify future questions as deferred. Continue independent authorized work while waiting, and wait for the user's decision before taking dependent actions. Record settled decisions in the relevant document and resume once shared understanding is confirmed. Reuse clear answers and existing authorization; do not repeat settled questions without new evidence. If neither skill is available, or the alias cannot load its underlying skill, conduct the clarification directly: choose the unresolved decision that unblocks the most work, ask one concise question with a recommendation and reason, and wait for the answer before asking the next. Missing interview skills do not block clarification or require installation. Continue independent authorized work, but do not guess decisions or proceed with dependent work before the user answers.

Operations