linked-intent-dev

Linked-Intent Development

This skill guides a structured linked-intent development workflow. LID's goal is to narrow the agent's output distribution to the user's latent intent — specs, tests, and linkage together make the arrow of intent walkable, and the workflow's stops are where the agent's interpretation meets the user's intent for reconciliation.

Three rules govern every phase

Stop and iterate at every phase boundary. After completing each phase below, present it — the phase output in full, or an authorized inspector's summarized findings (see Specification and inspection instruments below) — incorporate numbered feedback, and proceed only on explicit approval. Each stop is mandatory; the stops are the mechanism realizing the HLD tenet Every phase is inspected. Skipping stops is the single most common way this workflow degrades into a rush. (Carveout: command-mode skills that execute a single directed pass, like /arrow-maintenance's audit-and-update, are not phase-structured in this sense and do not pause mid-pass. This workflow is generative; phases here produce intent, so every boundary gets a stop — unless the user has expressly authorized a consolidated cadence: a warned override, or an opt-in experiment they have declared.)

Run a coherence pre-flight before starting or resuming implementation. When picking up work — new session, returning to a change, cascading from an upstream change — verify that the HLD, LLDs, EARS specs, and tests are mutually coherent for the segment about to be touched:

• Do the EARS specs trace to the current LLD?
• Do the tests trace to the current EARS specs?
• Does the LLD still reflect the HLD's architecture?

If drift is detected, fix the docs first, then implement. A resumption check prevents one session's drift from being compounded into the next session's change.

Write docs as their fresh author. Every HLD, LLD, and EARS spec produced by these phases must read as if authored fresh today, by someone who knew only the current intent and nothing of this conversation. As you draft or revise a doc, run the test on each line — would that fresh author put it on the page? Three residues fail it: narration of how the intent changed; meaning that only resolves for someone who was in this conversation; and answers or rebuttals that exist only because we discussed the question here. The keep-side is load-bearing too — rationale, considered alternatives, and constraints a fresh author would independently write stay; they are present intent, not residue. Record rejected alternatives and why in the LLD's Decisions & Alternatives table, not as asides in body prose. This is the docs carry current intent tenet. Write in the project's own domain language — name components, segments, and specs with the words the user and the codebase already use, not generic or LID-imposed labels. This is the Speak the project's language tenet.