Post

I’ve started including a `mission-statement.md` alongside my project-level `AGENTS.md`. It contains philosophical notes about the project: why it exists, what questions it exists to answer, what ‘good’ looks like, etc.

`AGENTS.md` is then told ‘where exact directions are unspecified or unclear, ensure the work aligns with `mission-statement.md`’ as a bit of a fallback/vibe-check. It’s not failsafe or bulletproof, but I have noticed it being invoked a few times recently and… it works!

The mission statement should never include instruction or implementation detail—it should be a guiding principle. The end that the means work around.

It's amazing how much all this has just reiterated the importance of things like Guiding Principles and Good Documentation—just took computers to need it for them to be implemented more emphatically. (Not a slight on you, really nice practice & guidance; a general observation across industry).