[ Intent ]
Intent
You hold the design before the machine moves.
Intent is where design begins. It holds that the shape of a system — its purpose,
its structure, its edges — lives in the developer’s mind before any instruction is
given to a machine. The mental model is yours. The why is yours.
The failure mode Intent guards against is prompting to think — using the model as a
substitute for forming your own model. That produces output you cannot evaluate,
because you never decided what “correct” was. Hold the design first; direct the
machine second.
Intent precedes prompt
The prompt is not where the work starts — it is where an already-formed intention gets handed to the machine. Form the mental model first: the why, the boundaries, the data model, the failure modes. When intent comes first, the prompt becomes a precise act of direction rather than a hopeful request, and the quality of what returns is bounded by the clarity you brought to it.
You decide the how
Architecture, naming, boundaries, the choice of approach — these are the developer's call, never silently delegated. A model can surface options and argue trade-offs; deciding among them is the human's job. When an idea is adopted, it is adopted because you judged it right, not because it was the first thing offered. A mind coder can always answer "why is it built this way?" with a reason they own.
Resources
Coming soon.