Discovery
The one-page problem brief
No code until the problem fits on one page a stranger understands.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Open Loop · product standards, published
Skills for agents that still have to meet a human bar.
A focused library for deciding, designing, building, testing, and shipping. Each published skill is complete enough to install—not a thin prompt or an unreviewed directory listing.
40
Original skills
Portable SKILL.md packages
140
Mapped topics
Real questions across 14 phases
6
Focused flows
Small skill sets in useful order
Skills are complete
Every skill includes a trigger, instruction, failure signals, a quality gate, and a proof test.
Topics help you find
Topics are editorial navigation—not thin skills. Each one maps a real product question to authored skills.
Flows provide order
Focused flows sequence the smallest useful skill set for a specific job without flooding agent context.
40 skills
Spec
Essential
Cut to a shippable slice
Scope is a knife: one thin, end-to-end slice a user can finish.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Design
Essential
Every state is a designed state
Empty, loading, error, success-after — designed before the happy path ships.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Design
Motion is a system, not a garnish
One easing family, three durations, every animation has a job.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Design
The first 60 seconds
Splash, onboarding, first value — the first minute is a designed product surface.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Design
Words are part of the interface
Human, specific, exact — copy is designed, never placeholder.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Architecture
Boring architecture, written down
Choose the dullest tech that works, and record why in one page.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Architecture
The data model comes first
Schema before endpoints — constraints in the database, not in hope.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Architecture
Business logic is a pure core
Rules live in pure functions; I/O stays at the edges; state machines are explicit.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Frontend
Essential
Hand-made over generated
Tokens, motion discipline, and the 100ms rule — the production frontend bar.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Frontend
Performance is a budget, not a hope
Numbers written down, measured on the production build, enforced at the gate.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Frontend
The accessibility floor
Keyboard, contrast, semantics, reduced motion — the floor nobody ships below.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Backend
Essential
The honest API contract
Typed boundaries, one error envelope, no lying 200s.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Backend
Essential
Auth you didn't invent
Proven library, scoped queries, IDOR-tested — identity is not a place to be creative.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Backend
Essential
Payments that balance
Integer money, idempotent webhooks, a ledger that reconciles to the cent.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Backend
Background work that survives failure
Idempotent jobs, retries with backoff, dead letters someone actually reads.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Quality
Essential
Unit-test the logic, not the framework
Pure business rules tested at the edges — where the money bugs live.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Quality
One e2e that walks the money path
Signup → core action → visible result, headless, on every merge.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Quality
The five review bars
Speed, trust, restraint, scale, voice — ask all five before approving.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Launch
Essential
The production floor
404s, focus rings, OG cards, budgets — the unglamorous list that separates products from demos.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Launch
Instrument before you argue
The money path emits events; errors page a human; one dashboard answers the question.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Operate
Every scar becomes a rule
The system must get smarter with every failure — or you'll pay for the same bug twice.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Discovery
Steal the bar, not the pixels
Tear down the three best competitors before designing anything.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Spec
Essential
Specs written for agents
An AI agent is your fastest junior — brief it like one, verify it like one.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Design
Layout carries the meaning
Hierarchy, grid, and whitespace do the talking before color does.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Architecture
Every dependency is a hire
Each package is code you now maintain but didn't write — interview it first.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Frontend
Components with honest APIs
Props speak the domain; variants are unions; composition beats configuration.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Frontend
Design the in-betweens
Breakpoints come from content, and the widths between them must also work.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Quality
Essential
Review AI code like a rival wrote it
Agents produce plausible code — plausible is not correct.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Launch
Config is code, environments are honest
One command boots it; a missing variable fails loudly; staging is production-shaped.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Discovery
Write the decision memo
Turn a fuzzy debate into one explicit choice, its evidence, trade-offs, and next move.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Discovery
Map the riskiest assumption
Find the belief most likely to waste the loop, then test it before polishing anything else.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Discovery
Grade the evidence
Separate what happened from what was said, inferred, or merely hoped.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Spec
Build the testable prototype
Prototype only enough reality to answer one costly product question.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Spec
Write the agent contract
Give an agent one bounded outcome, the context to act, and evidence that proves it is done.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Architecture
Route the minimum skill set
Load only the skills the task needs, in an order that avoids conflict and context waste.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Architecture
Define stop conditions first
Make done, blocked, unsafe, and not-worth-continuing observable before the loop starts.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Quality
Review with fresh context
Let a clean reviewer judge the artifact against the contract, not the builder's story.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Operate
Synchronize the living documentation
Make the shared memory describe what now exists, why it changed, and how to verify it.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Operate
Run the 30-day product loop
Hold one outcome for a month while evidence—not backlog volume—chooses each weekly move.
5-point gate · 3 warning signs
Need the system applied, not another resource list?
First Loop turns one hard product decision into working evidence within 48 hours of the agreed start.