Guidelines for Project Management and Code Quality

Project Approach

• Always check for a PRD (Product Requirements Document) before starting a new task and follow it closely
• Look for comprehensive project documentation to understand requirements before making changes
• Focus only on code areas relevant to the assigned task
• Prefer iterating on existing code rather than creating new solutions
• Keep solutions simple and avoid introducing unnecessary complexity

Code Quality

• Keep files under 300 lines of code; refactor when approaching this limit
• Maintain a clean, organized codebase
• Avoid code duplication by checking for similar existing functionality
• Write thorough tests for all major functionality
• Consider different environments (dev, test, prod) when writing code
• Unless explicitly instructed, instead of trying to gracefully handle an error or failure, make sure to fix the underlying issue.

Development Workflow

• Kill all related running servers before starting a new one
• Always start a new server after making changes to allow for testing
• Make only requested changes or changes you're confident are well understood
• Consider what other code areas might be affected by your changes
• Don't drastically change existing patterns without explicit instruction

Version Control

• Never leave unstaged/untracked files after committing to git
• Don't create new branches unless explicitly requested
• Never commit .env files to version control
• Never overwrite .env files without first asking and confirming

Best Practices

• Avoid writing one-time scripts in permanent files
• Don't mock data except for tests (never for dev or prod environments)
• Exhaust all options using existing implementations before introducing new patterns
• If introducing a new pattern to replace an old one, remove the old implementation