Compass Method Figure It Out

Before designing anything, check the methods that exist and state which you rejected and why. Most work that feels novel is a feature with an unfamiliar subject, and reaching here by default wastes the phases someone already wrote.

If one fits, use it. If two fit different parts, this method sequences them rather than replacing them.

Resolve the concepts across the whole of the work, not the first part of it (Grounding). Large work fails at the seams between its parts, and the seams are where the unresolved concepts hide.

Design the method this work needs: the phases in order, what each produces, and how each will be shown to have worked. A phase with no check is a phase that will be declared done by feel (principle-sequence-verifiable-units).

Say what would make you stop or change course. Work driven to completion without a stopping condition runs past the point where the plan stopped being right.

Where parts are independent, they can run separately, but a delegate inherits none of the grounding the session did. Each one is spawned as a named System, told what to read first and what it may do (Systems and levels).

Keep the shared state separable (principle-separate-before-serializing-shared-state). Two agents writing the same file, branch or lock is a coordination problem that should have been a partition.

Work the phases in order, recording as you go: what was decided, what was observed, what changed course. For anything the operator will review later rather than watch, that trail is the deliverable alongside the code (compass-principle-never-block-on-the-human).

Re-check the plan at each phase boundary. A plan that survives contact unchanged for many phases is usually not being read.

When it is done, the method you designed is itself a finding. If the same shape of work will recur, it becomes a real method (principle-encode-lessons-in-structure); if it will not, say so, so the next reader does not mine it for a pattern that was never intended.