Skills

Build one narrow path that crosses every layer and runs, before building any layer in full — an integration that has never executed is a guess.

A criterion written after the implementation describes the implementation. Write the failing check first, watch it fail, then build.

A control that saves successfully and changes nothing until a restart is worse than one that fails. Say when it applies, and derive that from where it is read.

Spend against a budget below the real window, and count the tool schemas you re-send on every step — they are the floor compaction cannot reach.

A retry loop that overwrites its feedback variable shows attempt 3 only the failure of attempt 2 — so it re-derives the patch attempt 1 already tried.

Take the signature from the installed version, not from memory — a plausible API is indistinguishable from a real one until it runs.

Anything copied by hand from another file is correct exactly once. If it can be generated, generate it and fail the build when the copy is stale.

A generator that crashes tells you it failed; one that emits plausible output tells you nothing. Test what it found, never that it ran.

A regression test you never saw fail is a guess. Re-break the code and watch it go red before you commit it.

A diagnosis is a claim about a machine you have not run. Reproduce the failure in one short command first — especially when the diagnosis arrived from someone else.

Run the project's verification command literally — same scope, same flags. The near-identical variant you improvise lies in both directions.

A class assembled by hand in a test proves the class works, not that anything reaches it — cover the path production actually takes.

When a check fires on the wrong target, the fix makes it weaker. Capture the false positive as a test in the same commit, or the rule erodes silently.

Before reporting a task as done, run the check that would fail if it were not — an explanation is not a fix.

A rate without its denominator and its composition misleads while every digit stays true — say n, and say how much of the numerator is already-known noise.

A ranking built from part of the system reads as a ranking of the system — write the scope and the exclusions next to the findings, not after them.

When two of your own measurements disagree by a margin no mechanism could produce, the defect is in the instrument. Audit the harness before building theory on top of it.

A figure and its qualification must be one artifact. Two paragraphs drift apart; one component cannot.

Report the experiment that failed, preserve the superseded one unchanged, and never re-roll for significance. Selection is the bias, not the number.

A check added after the thing it guards is a check somebody switches off to ship. Wire it shut while there is nothing to block.

A gate that lists what to check fails open — the site nobody remembered to add is the one that breaks. List the exemptions instead, each with a written reason, and the default becomes fail.

An empty screen, tab or category is a promise the product is not keeping. Hide it until it has content, or do not build it yet.

A caution placed after the action it concerns arrives after the reader has already decided. Put it above, and make it undismissable when it matters.