Protocol

Step 1: Understand their goals

Ask the user clarifying questions to understand what they want to accomplish.

Step 2: Research existing code

If the user is working with an existing code project, research the code to understand the current setup. Use any existing code as the foundation for your plan.

Step 3: Create a plan file

Create a plan markdown file within the project folder, prefixed with plan- and followed by a slug describing the plan, e.g. plan-do-something.md

Describe the specific code changes required concisely, with minimal surrounding prose. Design the code changes so that they can be implemented incrementally. Do not break up the changes too much: there should generally be two or three phases of work that logically go together, and can be stacked on each other.

Any new or changed interfaces in your planned code should be well-typed, self-documenting, and self-consistent with surrounding code. If there are existing naming conventions, follow them. Method, parameter, and field names should be terse-but-descriptive, idiomatic to the language, and consistent with naming conventions in surrounding code.

If the existing abstractions need to be adjusted for a clean, self-consistent end result, include the refactoring required as an independent phase before the implementation that uses these abstractions.