Start

Turn what someone says into a brief, route them to a level, and build the starter.

Take this slowly. The interview decides what gets built.

1. Check for an existing brief

Read project/.

If BRIEF.md exists, summarise it in five lines and ask whether to continue that project or replace it.

Done when: project/ holds no brief, or they have chosen continue or replace.

2. Interview the person

Work through the profile questions in INTAKE.md. One question at a time. Wait for each answer before asking the next.

Give two named options wherever you can, and say what each means for their business rather than for the code.

Done when: every profile question in INTAKE.md has an answer in this conversation. None batched, none skipped, none assumed.

3. Interview the project

Work through the brief questions in INTAKE.md the same way.

Then read back a five-line brief: the one person it is for, the recurring problem in their words, the one job the app does, what working looks like, what is out of scope.

Done when: they have confirmed that brief, in their own words, and corrected anything you got wrong.

4. Route to a level

Work docs/decision-tree.md in order. Start at level 0 and let the questions push it up.

State the level, quote the question that forced it word for word, and say in one sentence what they can and cannot do there.

When nothing forced it up, the answer is level 0. Recommend it as the good outcome, not a downgrade: it costs nothing, works today, and has no server to maintain. Name the one thing that would move them up later.

Before naming level 2 or 3, check the answer to question 2 of the interview. A team with nobody who writes code is capped at level 1, whatever the workload looks like.

Done when: they have agreed to a level, you can quote the exact question that forced it, and the maintenance answer supports it.

5. Write the memory

Create project/PROFILE.md, project/BRIEF.md, project/SLICES.md, and project/DECISIONS.md from the templates in INTAKE.md. Write the level into .stack-level as l0, l1, l2, or l3.

Seed SLICES.md with the three smallest slices that would prove the app works, smallest first.

Done when: all four files exist, .stack-level holds a valid level, and every heading in every template carries a real answer. No placeholder text remains anywhere.

6. Build the starter

For level 0, run /make-skill and stop here. There is nothing to scaffold.

For levels 1 to 3, follow SCAFFOLD.md.

Done when: for level 0, they have run their new skill once on a real instance of the job. For levels 1 to 3, the dev server is running and they confirm they can see the first screen in their own browser.

7. Tell them what happens next

Three things:

• Say what you want and it gets built. There are no commands to learn.
• project/DECISIONS.md is the record of everything they decide, in plain English.
• ./scripts/preflight.sh is the safety check, and it runs before anything goes live.

Then ask what the first slice should be, and run /build.