Best practices and workflows to use with an AI agent on any project

AGENT.𝗺𝗱

## Workflow Orchestration

### 1. Plan Mode Default
- Enter plan mode for ANY non-trivial task (3+ steps or architectural decisions)
- If something goes sideways, STOP and re-plan immediately 
- Don't keep pushing.
- Use plan mode for verification steps, not just building
- Write detailed specs upfront to reduce ambiguity

### 2. Subagent Strategy
- Use subagents liberally to keep the main context window clean.
- Offload research, exploration, and parallel analysis to subagents
- For complex problems, throw more compute at it via subagents
- One task per subagent for focused execution

### 3. Self-Improvement Loop
- Capture Lessons: Update AGENT.md with any change in approach the user has asked you to make.
- Write rules for yourself that prevent the same mistake
- Ruthlessly iterate on these lessons until the mistake rate drops.
- Review lessons at session start for relevant project

### 4. Verification Before Done
- Never mark a task complete without proving it works
- Diff behavior between main and your changes when relevant
- Ask yourself, "Would a staff engineer approve this?"
- Run tests, check logs, and demonstrate correctness.

### 5. Demand Elegance (Balanced)
- For non-trivial changes, pause and ask, "Is there a more elegant way?"
- If a fix feels hacky: "Knowing everything I know now, implement the elegant solution"
- Skip this for simple, obvious fixes 
- Don't over-engineer.
- Challenge your own work before presenting it

### 6. Autonomous Bug Fixing
- When given a bug report, just fix it. Don't ask for hand-holding
- Point at logs, errors, and failing tests. 
- Then resolve them.
- Zero context switching required from the user
- Go fix failing CI tests without being told how

## Task Management

1. **Plan First**: Write a plan to `tasks/todo.md` with checkable items.
2. **Verify Plan**: Check in before starting implementation.
3. **Track Progress**: Mark items complete as you go.
4. **Explain Changes**: High-level summary at each step.
5. **Document Results**: Add review section to `tasks/todo.md`
6. **Capture Lessons**: Update `tasks/lessons.md` after corrections

## Core Principles

- **Simplicity First**: Make every change as simple as possible. Impact minimal code.
- **No Laziness**: Find root causes. No temporary fixes. Senior developer standards.
- **Minimal Impact**: Changes should only touch what's necessary. Avoid introducing bugs.

I stopped reading at the fourth word... Because it's not even spelled correctly 🤣

I stopped reading at the fourth word... Because it's not even spelled correctly 🤣

You could provide correction; that was why it is public. Grammar fixed; you could check again and 🤣

I stopped reading at the fourth word... Because it's not even spelled correctly 🤣

You could provide correction; that was why it is public. Grammar fixed; you could check again and 🤣

There's still 7 mistakes - have you considered running it through an Ai for feedback? Especially if English isn't your first language. Where you from bud?

I stopped reading at the fourth word... Because it's not even spelled correctly 🤣

You could provide correction; that was why it is public. Grammar fixed; you could check again and 🤣

There's still 7 mistakes - have you considered running it through an Ai for feedback? Especially if English isn't your first language. Where you from bud?

Just did. Kindly review again

It's now readable, great job.
I mean some of it doesn't make sense and it's riddled with contradictions, but good job, you're getting there 👍

It's now readable, great job. I mean some of it doesn't make sense and it's riddled with contradictions, but good job, you're getting there 👍

Can you point them out, because this was lifted off a post based on recommendation, and for the help of the public, I just lift to gist, to make it accessible and distributable.

6. Capture Lessons: Update tasks/lessons.md after corrections

How about:

6. Capture Lessons: Update CLAUDE.md with any change in approach the user has asked you to make.

While I’ve spent many more iterations of AGENTS.md doing this rather than CLAUDE.md, I’ve found it works very, very well.

6. Capture Lessons: Update tasks/lessons.md after corrections

How about:

6. Capture Lessons: Update CLAUDE.md with any change in approach the user has asked you to make.

While I’ve spent many more iterations of AGENTS.md doing this rather than CLAUDE.md, I’ve found it works very, very well.

LGTM