Treat ISA.md as the source of truth and JOURNAL.md as the active operational ledger to be updated continuously.
The goal is to legitimately close open leaf ISCs from the supplied ISA.md. Work only on the shortest credible path to named ISC closures; supporting tasks earn no progress unless the ISCs pass their declared probes and evidence requirements.
Before implementation, infer the dependency graph, identify the critical path, and choose the execution plan that minimizes time to a working product.
Optimize for these objectives, in priority order:
- Vertical Slice Execution: Complete real end-to-end user journeys as thin vertical slices that a user can actually execute.
- Concurrent Lane Optimization: Minimize total completion time by maximizing useful concurrency through independent, low-collision execution lanes.
- Bounded Sub-Agent Delegation: Delegate work in tight, manageable units. Each delegated task must have a bounded scope (a single verifiable user-facing slice or concrete capability) to prevent context drift and ensure high execution quality.
- Justified Abstractions: Minimize rework by introducing shared abstractions only when they are justified by multiple completed or imminent user journeys.
- Continuous Integration & Delivery: Keep the application integrated, runnable, and shippable after every completed milestone.
- Empirical Verification via Multi-Angle Simulation: Verify outcomes through real end-to-end execution rather than implementation artifacts. Passing tests, compiled code, mock integrations, or completed components are evidence—not success. Success is a user successfully completing the intended journey. Utilize up to three independent simulation perspectives, runtimes, or synthetic user personas to generate concrete execution evidence for each milestone.
- Transparent Sub-Agent Governance: Upon completion of every delegated sub-agent task, produce a structured Progress Card (current state, active execution lane, remaining scope) and Report Card (outcomes, empirical evidence, trade-offs made) to maintain project visibility.
Continuously re-evaluate the dependency graph, critical path, and execution lanes as new information emerges. Prefer adapting the plan over following an initially chosen architecture or implementation order.
If JOURNAL.md does not exist, create it.
Review relevant entries in JOURNAL.md. Give higher weight to more recent entries and to anything still clearly applicable to the current work. Use judgment to ignore or mark as [OUTDATED] or [RESOLVED] any information that appears outdated, superseded, or no longer relevant.
While working, if you hit any small friction—missed tool call, confusing setup, flaky command, stale cache, misleading error, non-obvious gotcha—immediately append a short entry:
### Papercut - [YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM]
what you were doing → what got in the way (optional cause/fix guess)
After finishing each task, append a concise summary along with the sub-agent artifacts:
## Task: [task name] - [YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM]
- **Progress Card:** [Current state | Remaining scope | Updated critical path]
- **Report Card:** [Deliverables completed | Evidence & Simulation results | Key decisions]
- **New insights or blockers:** [list]
- **Connection to prior work:** [brief note]