dev — writing and changing code

Home branch in Memora: root/skill/dev. Every part is a method, not a mode: read the section you need, never a large file end to end.

Choosing a part

Everyday quality

Part	What it covers
parts/ponytail/	Main route: simplest clear complete solution; existing tools and code first, no silent scope cuts or weaker checks
parts/coding-style/	Grounded APIs and versions, project conventions, coherent changes, optional complexity diagnostics
parts/simplify/	Reduce needless complexity once behavior is understood; cleanup stays separate from correctness fixes
parts/systematic-debugging/	Reproduce and repair a local bug or a whole feature journey; trace dependencies and affected consumers
parts/debug-incident-protocol/	Hung, regressed or silently failing runtime, stale code, duplicate consumers, a restart that must be verified
parts/testing-discipline/	Writing and reviewing tests, test sensitivity, isolation of storage and external effects, what verification a change needs
parts/architecture-simplicity/	Module and layer design, library versus own code, god-files, "an abstraction for growth", schema evolution without data loss
parts/improve-codebase-architecture/	Structural improvement passes on an existing codebase
parts/agent-refactor-safety/	Extracting modules, splitting a monolith, moving symbols, repairing behavior lost after an edit
parts/bash-defensive-patterns/	Defensive bash: quoting, set -euo pipefail, safe temp files, portability traps
parts/changelog-discipline/	Keep a CHANGELOG as a decision log: what changed, why, what was rejected
parts/cross-platform-gotchas/	Python/bash installers on Linux, macOS and Windows: paths, encodings, package managers, WSL stubs

API, data and service design

Part	What it covers
parts/api-design-reviewer/	Review API designs for consistency, ergonomics and contract quality
parts/api-test-suite-builder/	Build API test suites from contracts or specs
parts/database-designer/	Schema design: normalization, indexes, constraints, migrations
parts/sql-database-assistant/	Working SQL for Postgres, MySQL and SQLite — queries, tuning, schema changes
parts/jsonc-surgical-edit/	Edit JSON/JSONC configs by offsets without losing comments, ordering or manual entries
parts/money-path-safety/	Anything that debits, credits or grants: idempotency, atomicity, buckets, hard gates, charge after success
parts/hardening-observability/	Rate limits, metrics, log tiers, "database is locked", why metrics lie, a security pass

AI and retrieval plumbing

Part	What it covers
parts/rag-architect/	Design RAG pipelines: chunking, embeddings, retrieval evaluation
parts/langchain-rag/	LangChain-specific RAG implementation patterns
parts/llm-cost-optimizer/	Reduce LLM cost: model tiering, caching, prompt compression

Deciding and routing

Part	What it covers
parts/production-first-decisions/	A consequential tool or design choice with unresolved evidence: compare, research the gap, spike the load-bearing claim
parts/using-superpowers/	Choose and compose task-relevant skills when the route is unclear
parts/fastapi/	FastAPI and Pydantic conventions: Annotated, return types, routers, async versus sync, SSE and byte streaming, frontend serving, OpenTelemetry

Rules

• Main route → understand the task and the code → ponytail + coding-style → verification through the real usage path. A method, not an approval ceremony.
• Bug → systematic-debugging for cause and consumer-wide repair; a hung process or a suspicious restart → debug-incident-protocol. Verification stays a completed act, not a separate gate: BOOT §5 already forbids reporting unexercised claims.
• Refactor versus cleanup → behavior-preserving cleanup is simplify; structural redesign is improve-codebase-architecture; a risky mechanical sweep is agent-refactor-safety.
• Tests → testing-discipline. Implementation order is not a completion gate; the mandatory TDD package was retired by the owner on 2026-10-04.
• Forks worth ask_questions: a change of public contract, a schema migration that can lose data, a new dependency or service, money or quota semantics, an irreversible data operation. Ordinary implementation detail is decided here and stated in one line.
• Findings that outlive the task become Memora nodes under root/skill/dev (or the project branch); _memory/reports/ keeps only large tables and dated evidence.
• Shipping the change → the ship router.

Related

ship (release, dependencies, git), discipline methods now living in the parts above, review (verify, diagnosing-bugs), loops for repeated work.