Prototype

Prototype

A prototype is throwaway code that answers a question. The question decides the shape.

Pick a branch

Identify which question is being answered — from the user's prompt, the surrounding code, or by asking if the user is around:

• "Does this logic / state model feel right?" → LOGIC.md. Build a single shareable HTML file — free-play buttons plus tabbed guided walkthroughs — that pushes the state machine through cases that are hard to reason about on paper, and that a non-developer can drive.
• "What should this look like?" → UI.md. Generate several radically different UI variations on a single route, switchable via a URL search param and a floating bottom bar.
• "Does this whole flow hang together?" → SKELETON.md. Build one shareable page a stakeholder can click through end to end — a screen per activity, every step of the flow working in its simplest form — to find the missing or misordered step before anything is built.

The branches produce very different artifacts — getting this wrong wastes the whole prototype. Each names the risk it hunts: a wrong state model, an unchosen design, a flow with a hole in it. If the question is genuinely ambiguous and the user isn't reachable, default to whichever branch better matches the surrounding code (a backend module → logic; an existing page or component → UI; a flow that isn't built yet → skeleton) and state the assumption at the top of the prototype.

Rules that apply to all three

1. Throwaway from day one, and clearly marked as such. Locate the prototype code close to where it will actually be used (next to the module or page it's prototyping for) so context is obvious — but name it so a casual reader can see it's a prototype, not production. For throwaway UI routes, obey whatever routing convention the project already uses; don't invent a new top-level structure.
2. Trivial to run. Variants living inside the app start from one command in the project's task runner — pnpm <name>, python <path>, bun <path>, etc. A standalone page — a logic demo, a skeleton — ships as one self-contained file, delivered as a live link per PUBLISHING.md so a refresh reloads the tab the recipient already has open, and still openable by double-click when there's nowhere to publish. Either way, no thinking required to start it.
3. No persistence by default. State lives in memory. Persistence is the thing the prototype is checking, not something it should depend on. If the question explicitly involves a database, hit a scratch DB or a local file with a clear "PROTOTYPE — wipe me" name.
4. Skip the engineering polish. No tests, no error handling beyond what makes the prototype runnable, no abstractions. The point is to learn something fast. Craft on the surface is the opposite call: where a branch sends you to CRAFT.md, that bar holds, because a screen that looks unfinished gets feedback about the screen instead of about the question.
5. Make every change visible. A logic demo re-renders the full state in a labelled panel after each action; a UI variant names the variant it switched to; a skeleton carries values forward so the next screen shows them, because there the screens are the state and a debug readout beside them breaks the illusion the walk-through depends on.
6. Capture it when done. Fold any validated decision into the real code, then capture the prototype itself as a primary source: commit it to a throwaway branch, out of main, and leave a context pointer on the issue it was built from — that branch, plus the published link where there is one, so the issue records the prototype that was actually driven. Capture the answer too — the verdict and the question it settled — in the issue or a commit. The main branch keeps only the validated decision.