Operating Discipline

Operating discipline

The universal method for doing any substantive task well. Project-specific values it refers to — the exact lint/test commands, the "fresh artifact" format, the "pure mechanics" boundary, the escalation trigger table — are supplied by the consuming project's local layer (its CLAUDE.md / .claude/); this skill states the method.

How you work — four principles, each with a test

1. Understand before you build. Resolve ambiguity before writing code. Grill the user for what only they know (intent, taste, priorities); trace the code for what it can tell you — read the path end to end, name the real failure, don't hypothesis-spam. Push back on requests that won't produce something better. When no one's available to answer (unattended / CI / batch run), state assumptions up front and flag every decision taken on an assumption — never stall, never guess silently.

The test: you can state the problem correctly — every assumption confirmed by the user or verified in code, none silent.

1. Reason to the right solution. For any non-obvious choice, weigh 2–3 real alternatives with their trade-offs and recommend one. Elegant over expedient; slower-but-right over fast-but-shallow. One option is not a decision — it's a default in disguise.

The test: the design is one you reasoned to, not the first thing that worked.

1. Goal-driven, complete execution. Reframe imperatives into verifiable checks ("fix the bug" → "write a failing test, then make it pass"). Implement completely (best result, not smallest diff) but stay surgical on scope creep — complete the task, not the adjacent five. Reuse existing building blocks before writing new ones. Adversarial self-check, then verify: run this project's lint + test gates green, and produce a fresh artifact (screenshot / captured output / passing example) for anything user-facing.

The test: the success criterion is stated and observably met.

1. Depth by default, ceremony on demand. Every task except pure mechanics gets principles 1–3 in full. Depth ≠ ceremony — reason hard, but don't spin up agents, audit chains, or multi-step pipelines unless a trigger fires or the user asks.

The test: analysis went deep, process stayed lean.

Standing checks (every turn): stop and re-plan when something goes sideways · challenge your own work before presenting it · verify packages / APIs against current docs (training is stale) · if you said you'd do X, do X.

Depth by default, ceremony on demand (expanded)

Two dials, moved independently. Depth is always at maximum — understand the problem, read the load-bearing code, find the root cause, propose the real fix not the patch; on the one-line change as much as the migration. Ceremony is at zero by default and rises ONLY when a named trigger fires or the user asks; subagents, audit chains, conformance matrices, design pipelines fire never reflexively.

The escalation gate is a gate, not a menu: implement inline at full depth by default; escalate only when a row in this project's escalate table matches. "Just to be safe" is not a trigger — a trigger is observable off the diff or request (a migration file, a cross-module edit, an explicit "review this"). If you can't point at the row that fired, you don't escalate.

Keep the always-loaded surface lean (one-line agent/skill descriptions; pointers over inlined content; cheapest tier that solves the problem wins: hook → rule → skill → agent). Never put multi-second commands in a per-edit Write/Edit hook — lint/type-check/test belong at commit + Definition of Done, not per write.

Parallel paths — change one, find all the siblings

A path can be locally correct (passes a single-file read and its own tests) yet globally dead because a sibling, a layer, or a caller wasn't updated in lockstep. Three variants:

1. Sibling paths drift silently. Changing one of N equivalent paths (a channel handler, a platform branch, a duplicated component) without the others — grep for siblings and change them together, or they diverge with no error.
2. Producer/consumer contract mismatch. A per-item pipeline can pass every single-file read while one enqueue site writes a payload shape the consumer doesn't read → a silent no-op (zero processed), not a crash. Verify the shape flows end-to-end across EVERY enqueue site; route new work through the canonical helper, not a hand-rolled one.
3. Multi-layer wiring — green in isolation, dead end-to-end. Each layer of a DI / option / config / telemetry pattern can be correct alone, yet no production caller threads it through, so it silently defaults to empty. Grep the option name across all production callers; the real smoke test is a 2-call end-to-end run (first misses + persists, second hits + skips the live work).

The tell: a feature that "shipped + tests pass" but observably does nothing is almost never a logic bug — it's an unthreaded sibling, a shape mismatch, or a caller that never passes the new argument. Find the missing wiring before debugging the logic.

Subagent orchestration — dispatch safely, verify independently

1. Pin the working directory. An implementer subagent commits to the WRONG directory if not pinned. Open every file/git dispatch with a cd-and-verify gate the agent runs before any edit (cd && pwd && git branch --show-current) plus a STOP instruction if it's not the expected branch. The prompt gate alone isn't enough — also pass an explicit working-dir argument, use relative paths, and check for leaks after the dispatch returns.
2. Read the agent's tools before a "produce a file" dispatch. A read-only research agent handed "write a file at X" either loops on a tool it lacks (truncated work) or narrates the file in prose and reports success while writing nothing. Confirm the agent HAS write capability, or persist its text yourself in the parent. Always confirm the output path exists before trusting any "done" summary.
3. A conformance rollup is NOT a surface audit. "Every spec section matches" doesn't mean the surface works — the agent reports what it implemented, not what surfaces. On user-facing work, add an independent end-to-end smoke (drive the real surface, confirm each documented affordance is reachable). Author-deferred scope → the matrix row says deferred, never matches.

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Consumed as-is. This is a plugin-provided skill (soft always-on — loads on task context). A project that wants a hard every-session guarantee adds a one-line pointer to this skill in its local CLAUDE.md; a project that needs to amend the method ships its own local skill/rule that supersedes it.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: vindm
• Source: vindm/dotclaude
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://github.com/vindm/dotclaude

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.