The Path Every Task Follows

Your agents have roles, a board to pull from, and a ledger that records what happened. What is still improvised is the part in between: how a task actually gets done. Ask for the same kind of work twice and you get two different routes, and the thinking behind both dies when you close the window. This chapter pins the route down.

9.15.1What happens in the session does not survive itAdd note

Most of what a working session produces is not the code. It is everything around the code: why that approach and not the other one, what the agent checked, what it ruled out, what broke on the first attempt. Close the window and all of it is gone.

A task workflow fixes that. It is one path every request walks, where each stop leaves a file behind. If a stop produced nothing on disk, it did not happen. The chat is where work gets discussed; the repository is where it gets kept.

9.15.2One path, six stopsAdd note

Every request, however small, walks the same path:

1. Ticket. Open one on the board before anything else, so the work exists outside the chat.
2. Research. Read the code, the docs, and the decisions that already cover this, then write the findings down.
3. Spec. State what will change and what done looks like, and get your yes before any code.
4. Build. Implement only what the spec says, in slices.
5. Verify. Run the tests and the app. A green run is the proof, not the agent's opinion.
6. Record. Close the ticket, log any real choice as a decision, and note the outcome.

A one-line fix walks it in minutes and a feature takes a week. The path does not change, only the size of each stop.

9.15.3Demand evidence, not recallAdd note

Research is the stop people cut first, and it is the one that saves the most rework. An agent that has not opened your code will cheerfully invent how it works, and everything built on that invention has to come out again.

So write the standard down: every claim about your system names the file it read or the command it ran. No "should be", no "probably". If it did not check, it says it did not check.

9.15.4Write the path into the rules fileAdd note

A path you have to remember to ask for is not a path. It belongs in the file your agent reads before every session, as a procedure it follows without being told:

9.15.5Put your agents on the pathAdd note

Do this now: paste the prompt so the path lands in your rules file, then run your next task through all six stops without skipping the research.