# Methodology

The expert workflow is a stateful discipline, not a large completion prompt.

1. **Understand** — classify the request and identify consequential unknowns.
2. **Inspect** — build a bounded ProjectModel from actual repository evidence.
3. **Design** — identify public seams, invariants, trust boundaries, and the smallest coherent change.
4. **Plan** — create vertical tasks with dependencies and explicit verification requirements.
5. **Implement** — use existing Harness filesystem/shell/browser/tools and repository-native patterns.
6. **Run/Test** — use the smallest useful behavioral check; apply TDD where a meaningful seam exists.
7. **Observe actual behavior** — for UI/network work inspect runtime, console, network, responsive, keyboard, and error states when supported.
8. **Review** — separate spec compliance from implementation quality and complexity review.
9. **Fix** — address root cause and add regression protection for bugs.
10. **Verify** — record fresh evidence for each claim; unknown is not pass.

The state machine forbids `IMPLEMENTING → VERIFIED` and `IMPLEMENTING → COMPLETE` shortcuts. The current V0.1 runtime exposes phase/task/evidence state to the model and leaves detailed task advancement to the native Harness tool flow so it does not duplicate todo/session infrastructure.