dzhng / implement-spec

Implement Spec

Build the active spec to completion, one reviewable pass at a time. The spec is
the implementation plan; user constraints and accepted experimental evidence
remain binding when the architecture changes.

A pass (usually one slice) is a commit checkpoint, not a stopping point. The
job is the whole spec — every slice, every global TODO — not the first green
commit. Finishing a pass means starting the next one, not handing back to the
user. Only stop when the spec is fully implemented (or a genuine blocker needs a
decision only the user can make).

Work in parallel wherever the graph allows. Do not walk the ladder one slice
at a time when slices are independent. Read the spec's dependency graph as a
wavefront and delegate independent passes to subagents that run concurrently
(see Rules) — you orchestrate and integrate; only serialize what genuinely
depends on prior work.

Workflow

1. Read the repo README, the spec README, and the next slice before editing.
   Load any skills named by the spec. Identify the current pickup point, global
   TODOs, required gates, and what must stay green. If a multi-slice spec lacks
   a live handoff prompt, add one before the first pass ends.
   For a validated spike, apply Preserve the winner below before editing.

2. Reconcile the plan with the current code. If the slice would preserve a
   development-only shim, duplicated type, weak wrapper, or obsolete path,
   replace it with the simpler architecture and update the spec handoff.

3. Implement one coherent pass: usually one slice, one vertical checkpoint, or
   one architecture correction. Keep the review surface small enough to audit.

4. Verify the actual contract. For behavior changes, run the focused unit tests
   first; for browser-visible work, use the real browser/harness and inspect
   screenshots so the subject is framed and readable, not merely nonblank.
   A visual CHANGE carries two extra proofs before you claim it: a
   byte/pixel diff against the pre-change baseline on the production route
   (static checks and re-anchored assertions all pass on a no-op — a
   palette pass once shipped "verified" while the production frame was
   byte-identical), and an unprimed
   [screenshot-critique](../screenshot-critique/SKILL.md) — at the
   user's reported framing when the pass answers their visual bug report —
   before declaring it fixed; the implementer's eyes are primed by the fix
   and repeatedly pass what fresh eyes catch.
   Never weaken an existing default gate or repin a failing contract without
   proving the old contract is wrong.

5. Review the change list and clean up after every pass, before committing.
   Read git status/git diff --stat line by line and account for every path:
   one-off probes, shot scripts, scratch files, nohup.out, ad-hoc screenshot
   dirs, and disposable SPIKE/debug notes never enter a commit — scratch stays
   out of the tree. Preserve frozen references, fixtures, and research evidence
   in the project's reference or spec assets area. A file without a durable
   purpose does not ship.
   Delegated agents leak these; the integrating reviewer re-checks the merged
   tree with the same eye.

   Sizing the pass — measuring what it cost and reworking it when the line count
   is out of proportion to the behaviour it delivers — belongs to the shape pass
   in step 6, under [refactor-clean](../refactor-clean/SKILL.md).

6. Run [review](../review/SKILL.md) at the end of every pass, before committing.
   It sequences the three closeout lenses — refactor-clean on the shape,
   code-review on the settled diff, write-docs on what the change touched — and
   you apply the fixes from all three. Long specs are where sediment compounds,
   so hold the shape pass to this pass's own output: dev-only shims, duplicated
   concepts, parallel abstractions, and compatibility wrappers it introduced
   collapse into the clean contract with one owner, so the code reads as designed
   today, not tacked on. Last, run
   [audit-choices](../audit-choices/SKILL.md) on the cleaned pass — a pure
   audit that appends every decision made where the spec was silent (your own,
   and each delegated subagent's when integrating) to the spec's choices
   ledger (specs/<feature>/choices.md) with verdicts, changing no code
   itself. You act on its findings: redo unsound choices from their corrected
   decisions, adopt the recorded provisional call on any user-only entry — the
   audit never blocks the run. Rerun the affected checks, then commit only the
   focused changes from this pass.

7. Update the spec README's "Next Agent Prompt": status, completed work, next
   pickup point, blockers, changed gates, and any architecture decision that
   changed the plan.

8. Run a maintenance checkpoint as part of the loop, not as endgame cleanup.
   Trigger it after a red pass, after every two or three slice commits, after a
   rebase/resume/compaction, before changing feature areas, when evidence
   invalidates the plan, when the handoff contradicts the TODO/graph, when the
   choices ledger's entries cluster around one slice, or when the
   active prompt grows hard to scan. Long specs bloat repeatedly; cleanup is a
   normal pass, not a cosmetic chore.

   A checkpoint cleans both plan and code before more feature work:

   • Shorten the README handoff to one current pickup, one priority order, and
     one compact evidence ledger; move play-by-play into slice files or assets.

   • Correct completed/rejected/next markers; delete stale TODOs, stale
     acceptance claims, duplicated status sections, and obsolete prompts.

   • Re-rank remaining work so the next red/high-risk contract is explicit, and
     demote branches that are not on that path.

   • Reslice any still-red, overloaded, or foggy slice into smaller independently
     verifiable passes before implementing past it.

   • Delete or collapse scaffolding from earlier passes when it no longer owns a
     real contract.

   • If the work feels off-track, ask a fresh review/subagent to audit spec shape
     and priority order, then apply the fixes.

   Commit the checkpoint as its own focused pass when cleanup changes the spec,
   code shape, or handoff enough that future agents would otherwise inherit stale
   context. It is done only when a fresh agent can read the README handoff, TODO,
   and slice graph and choose the same next action without conversation history.

9. Continue. If any slice or global TODO is still open, go straight back to
   step 1 for the next one — same session, no pause for acknowledgement. Keep
   looping until every TODO is closed.

10. Run [review](../review/SKILL.md) once more over the whole spec. The
    per-pass reviews each judged one slice against the code as it stood then; this
    one judges the finished feature. Scope it to the spec's full diff, not the last
    pass — that is the only scope where duplication spread across slices, a shape
    that only reads wrong once every slice has landed, and docs that describe
    increments instead of the feature are visible at all. Apply the fixes, rerun
    the gates, commit.

11. Consolidate the choices ledger, then close. When the last slice lands, the
    choices.md you've been appending to per pass is build-order sediment: entries
    banked early carry "provisional — revisit in slice N" verdicts that a later pass
    silently resolved, entries a later pass reverted still sit there, and the same
    choice may appear twice. The per-pass rule "banked is settled, never re-listed"
    is what let that drift accumulate — so the final consolidation is its deliberate
    exception. Before archiving, rewrite choices.md from scratch as the final
    ledger: re-audit every banked choice against the final shipped code (not the
    pass it landed in), collapse each provisional/needs-later entry to its actual
    end state, drop anything a later pass superseded or reverted, and merge
    duplicates. Keep it choices only — no gate results, e2e evidence, or
    review-finding narration; those are reported elsewhere and are not decisions the
    user now owns. Present it per [audit-choices](../audit-choices/SKILL.md): grouped
    by verdict, ranked least-confident-first, every entry ELI5 and standalone.
    Then close the spec with [close-spec](../close-spec/SKILL.md).

Preserve the winner

• Read the frozen winning code, configuration, prompts/skills, and evidence.
  Preserve actual behavior, including quirks whose contribution is unknown.
  A rewritten spec or cleaner design does not supersede measured results.

• Port first; experiment separately. Give delegates the same reference and
  constraints. Record user-required differences; validate other behavioral
  changes against the winner before adopting them.

• Prove parity through the production entry point with matched inputs and
  controlled external responses. Compare computed requests, decisions, complete
  outputs, and relevant recovery paths—not just templates or component tests.
  Normalize only documented intentional differences. Run these cheap checks
  before costly confirmation, retaining the original quality gates.

• Missing parity evidence means unfinished. Preserve the reference and continue
  independent work rather than declaring equivalence.

Rules

• Delegate independent work to subagents so passes run in parallel. The
  spec's dependency graph is the map: whenever two or more slices, branches (e.g.
  frontend vs backend), sub-slices, replication spikes, or recon tasks have no
  unmet dependency on each other, hand them to subagents that run concurrently
  (spawn them in one message) instead of doing them yourself in sequence. Give
  each subagent its own git worktree when they touch files in parallel so their
  diffs don't collide, and keep work that shares the same files or API seam on a
  single agent to avoid merge chaos. Each delegated unit still owns its full pass
  — implement, verify, review, focused commit — and you integrate
  the results, resolve conflicts, rerun the affected gates on the merged tree, and
  keep the Next Agent Prompt coherent. Only serialize what the graph says must be
  serial; never idle a lane waiting on an unrelated one.

• Treat backward compatibility as non-goal for unshipped/dev scaffolding. Delete
  old paths, wrappers, aliases, fallback modes, and stale tests when the new
  architecture replaces them.

• Do not let tests get easier by accident. A split harness or new runner must
  preserve the old default coverage unless the spec explicitly changes it.

• Commit every clean pass, then immediately begin the next one. A green commit is
  a checkpoint, not permission to stop. If a pass is not green, do not commit it
  as finished; report the failing contract and exact evidence.

• Do not stop while work remains. "Slice N is done and committed" is not a
  finished task while later slices or TODOs are open — a single completed slice is
  a reason to continue, never to hand back. The only legitimate early stops are: a
  hard blocker that needs a user-only decision, a gate that cannot be made green
  with an honest fix, or the user interrupting. Running low on context is not a
  stop — update the handoff and keep going. When you must stop, say exactly which
  slice is next and why you paused.

• Keep visual evidence honest: contact sheets, GIFs, screenshots, and
  baselines must show the thing being judged at the intended camera/framing.

• Sweep every user-visible surface implied by the slice. A model, state, or
  data change is not done if the main view, cards, menus, reports, and
  verification fixtures now tell different stories.

• When the implementation touches shared behavior, leave docs or spec rationale
  using [write-docs](../write-docs/SKILL.md) principles: durable invariants and
  pointers, not copied inventories.

• For long specs, keep the spec itself reviewable as an invariant. Do not let
  the README become a transcript of every attempt; keep one current handoff, one
  TODO/graph, and one compact evidence ledger, with details in slice files or
  assets.

• Human checkpoints never block. At a slice's review or sign-off gate, open
  the relevant shots with [preview-shots](../preview-shots/SKILL.md),
  state the decision and the options, and give the user ~5 minutes to weigh in —
  keep building other non-blocked work meanwhile, never idle. If they don't
  answer, make the call yourself on the evidence, record the decision and its
  rationale in the spec (the checkpoint's resolution), and keep going — and close
  the shots you opened (preview-shots cleans up Preview) so a long unattended run
  never piles up windows. A goal or implementation NEVER stops to wait on the
  user; it documents the assumption, keeps it reversible, and lets the user
  course-correct later.

Done

A pass is done when code, spec handoff, verification evidence, review
cleanup, and a focused commit all agree on the same current truth — then you
start the next pass.

The spec is done — and only then is this skill done — when every slice and
global TODO is closed, all gates are green, the whole-spec review has run and its
fixes have landed, the handoff shows nothing left to pick up, and the spec has
been archived with [close-spec](../close-spec/SKILL.md).
Anything short of that is mid-implementation: keep going.

The final handback presents the choices ledger, not the diff, per
[audit-choices](../audit-choices/SKILL.md) — a days-long unsupervised run
earns its merge through this ledger; it is the user's review surface for
everything decided without them. Hand over the consolidated ledger from
step 11 (final state, verified against shipped code, choices only), never the
raw per-pass append — a ledger still carrying "will be done in a later slice"
verdicts tells the user you never went back to confirm it was.

**Close the handback with the size of what you added — always last, after the
ledger.** The ledger says what was decided; this says what it cost. A short
table over the whole run:

Then one paragraph naming the structural surfaces the run added — a new
cron, table column, index, endpoint, config flag, dependency — because those
are what the user now owns and maintains, and a line count alone hides them.
Exclude formatter churn from files the run did not otherwise touch, and say so
if you excluded any.

State the count plainly whatever it is. A large net addition for a small
behavioural change is a finding to report, not a number to bury — and if you
notice it here rather than at the pass that caused it, say which pass it was.

Slices are not the only unit of scope. A spec also records decisions —
ledger rows, decision-table entries, invariants — and a decision can be agreed
in planning but never turned into a slice, especially when it's orthogonal to
the slices' theme. "All slices closed" then reads as done while that decision is
silently unbuilt. Before declaring the spec done, reconcile every recorded
decision against the shipped code, not just the slice list: each one is either
implemented, or explicitly marked "no code needed." A decision with no owning
slice is the classic silent miss — the close-spec audit is the backstop for it,
not the first line of defense.