Bucket Ask

Bucket-Ask: Interview → Plan → One Gate → Autonomous Build

The most expensive bug is building the wrong thing. It happens in the first ten minutes — the user describes an idea, the build starts, and hours later the core question was never answered. Bucket-ask kills that by front-loading the intent conversation. Then it gets out of the way and runs to completion on a single approval.

The text after /bucket-ask is the project description. If it's empty or too vague to interview against, ask for a one-paragraph description first.

The shape

1. Interview — find the real goal (no code, no writing yet).
2. Plan — lock the intent anchor; decompose into a dependency graph of buckets.
3. One gate — confirm anchor + plan + autonomy contract in a single approval. The only mandatory stop.
4. Autonomous build — build every bucket to completion, parallel where safe, without asking between buckets or waves.
5. Report — one consolidated review at the end.

Speed contract — read this first

Fast means: one batched interview round, one combined approval, then an autonomous build that stops only on a real halt condition. Fast does NOT mean skipping the interview or auto-confirming the anchor — those are the cheap insurance that makes the autonomous build safe. You buy speed by collapsing N human round-trips into one gate, never by deleting the safeguard.

Phase 1 — Interview (no code, no writing yet)

The interview is the skill. It may be brief; it is never skipped. Uncover, in one batched turn:

1. The actual goal — not the feature list. What does success look like, and why this, why now?
2. The core decision this drives — what will the user (or their users) decide or do differently because this exists? If it drives no decision, surface that — it may be a vanity build.
3. Constraints — timeline, budget, stack, what already exists.
4. The smallest version that would still be useful — this anchors the idea-proving bucket.

Ask 3–5 sharp questions batched together in a single turn (use AskUserQuestion if available, else plain prose). Never drip-feed. Skip any dimension the opening description already answers — don't pad to hit five. Push back for a second round only if a core answer (the goal or the core decision) is too vague to anchor against — never for constraints or nice-to-haves; otherwise proceed with a best-effort anchor the user confirms at the gate.

Then draft (do not yet confirm — confirmation happens at the gate) the intent anchor: goal + core decision + success criterion, in 2–3 sentences. This becomes the verbatim contract every later step is checked against.

Phase 2 — Plan: buckets as a dependency graph

Decompose into 3–7 small buckets, each independently reviewable (it produces something judgeable, not invisible plumbing) with explicit done criteria.

• One bucket is the idea-prover: the smallest thing that proves the core idea works — the riskiest, most idea-invalidating piece. It is special (see Phase 4).
• For every other bucket declare an explicit depends-on (the bucket ids it needs; empty = independent). Every non-idea-proving bucket also implicitly depends on the idea-prover — treat the idea-prover as a dependency of the whole graph. No cycles: if one appears, merge or split to break it.
• The idea-prover is wave 0 — always run solo. Compute topological waves over the remaining buckets only: wave 1 = remaining buckets with no unmet dependency, wave 2 = those whose deps are now met, etc. Independent buckets in the same wave run in parallel; dependent buckets pipeline across waves.

Present a table — # | bucket | depends-on | done-looks-like — then the computed plan in plain language, e.g. "Wave 0: B1 (idea-prover, solo gate) · Wave 1 (parallel): B2, B3 · Wave 2: B4 (needs B2, B3)."

Phase 3 — The single gate (the ONLY mandatory human stop)

In one message, present together:

• (a) the intent anchor (goal + core decision + success criterion),
• (b) the full bucket graph + wave plan, and
• (c) the autonomy contract, stated verbatim:

  "On your approval I will build all N buckets end-to-end without further check-ins. I will stop only if (1) the work drifts from this anchor, (2) a decision arises this anchor cannot resolve, or (3) I hit a failure I cannot recover from. Otherwise the next thing you hear from me is the finished run report."

Take one approval (AskUserQuestion: Approve / Edit / Reorder). The user may reorder, merge, cut, or rewire dependencies here. Never confirm your own anchor. Once approved, autonomy is licensed — do not seek approval again. This approval persists across a halt: once the user resolves a halt, resume the remaining buckets autonomously under the same approval — do not re-gate.

Phase 4 — Autonomous build (do NOT ask between buckets or waves)

You already have standing approval from the gate. Building the next bucket — or opening the next wave — is not a new decision; it is the continuation of approved work. Asking "shall I continue?" is a defect. The next time you address the user is the end-of-run report, unless one of the three halt conditions below fires.

Wave 0 — the risk gate (automatic, never a human stop). Build the idea-proving bucket first and alone, before any other bucket and before wave computation, even if other buckets are dependency-free. Self-verify it: run its detected test/build command if one exists, and check each done criterion against the actual artifact by inspection or execution; if nothing can confirm done, that is halt #1 (the idea isn't provable as built). Pass → continue immediately and fan out the remaining waves — no stop. Fail = halt #1, but only when the core premise is DISPROVEN (the thing it was meant to demonstrate cannot work or be built as conceived). A merely rough, incomplete, or improvable idea-prover is a PASS — keep going. This pays the risk gate automatically so the happy path never stops.

Waves 1+. For each wave, in order:

1. Isolate — code in a git repo only: if parallel executors would write overlapping files, give each its own worktree (git worktree add ../.bucket-ask/<id> -b bucket/<id>). Buckets touching disjoint files need no worktree. For non-repo work (writing, research, a single-file script) skip worktrees and use the inline rung.
2. Dispatch — issue up to 3 executor Agent calls per message (the concurrency cap); they run concurrently. If a wave has more than 3 buckets, send them in batches of ~3 and let one batch return before dispatching the next batch of the same wave. Each executor plans-then-builds its one bucket in a single shot — no mid-build plan approval.
3. Integrate — the conductor is the single writer to the shared branch. Record a checkpoint commit, then merge each returned branch in dependency order. A merge conflict gets one conductor resolution attempt; an unresolvable conflict is halt #3.
4. Verify before advancing — run the detected test/build command on the merged result (or, if none exists, confirm each bucket's done by inspection). Green → continue. Failure → one conductor self-correction attempt (a targeted fix executor, or fix inline); still failing → halt #3. Do not dispatch the next wave until this wave is green.
5. Log and continue — append a one-line progress entry and immediately open the next wave. Logging is non-blocking; a wave boundary is not a checkpoint — between-wave pauses are forbidden exactly like between-bucket pauses.

If a halt fires mid-wave: dispatch no further waves; let the current wave's in-flight executors finish (or stop them if your harness allows); merge none of that wave's branches; leave their worktrees intact for inspection (list the paths in the report); jump to Phase 5.

Drift check (every bucket, one line). DRIFTING means a material departure from the anchor — specifically: the bucket adds a capability the anchor does not name, changes who decides what, or makes the success criterion unmeasurable. A reasonable implementation choice, a renamed field, or rough-but-on-target work is NOT drift — log it on-anchor and continue. Only material drift halts (#1).

Decision resolution — bias hard toward deciding. When a decision touches the anchor, resolve it from the anchor + interview answers, make the call, log it with its rationale, and continue — do not ask. The interview exists precisely so most decisions are pre-answered. Only a decision the anchor genuinely cannot disambiguate is halt #2.

Progress-log entry (per bucket, non-blocking): ### B<n> <name> — done: yes/partial/no · built: <one line> · deviation: none / <what+why> · drift: on-anchor / DRIFTING

Halt conditions — the ONLY reasons to stop mid-run

A closed allow-list. If none fires, keep going automatically.

1. DRIFT — material departure from the anchor (per the Phase 4 drift check), the idea-prover's premise is disproven, or an executor returns a drift flag.
2. UNRESOLVABLE DECISION — a genuine fork where both branches are defensible and the anchor + interview answers don't disambiguate.
3. UNRECOVERABLE FAILURE — a blocker that survives one conductor self-correction attempt: a missing secret/credential, an external dependency down, a contradictory requirement, an unresolvable merge conflict, or a verifier/test still red after one fix.

NOT halt conditions: a finished bucket · a finished wave · a decision the anchor already settles · a stylistic/implementation choice · simply "wanting to check in."

Phase 5 — End-of-run report (the single review surface)

When the run completes (or a halt fires), present one message: the intent anchor restated; the full progress log (every bucket → done-mapping, deviations, drift verdict); the decisions log (every anchor-touching call the conductor made autonomously, with rationale); any halt and the open question it raises (with the paths of any worktrees left for inspection); an overall verdict — does the delivered whole serve the original goal and core decision?; and a short list of follow-ups / out-of-scope items. The user reviews and course-corrects here, once, with full context. On clean completion, git worktree remove each merged worktree before reporting; on a halt, leave unmerged/in-flight worktrees in place (removing a dirty worktree needs --force and discards work).

Conductor vs. executor

Stay the conductor in the main session. Never delegate: the interview, the intent anchor, the bucket graph, the single gate, drift adjudication, branch integration/merge (you are the single writer to the shared branch), and the final report. Delegate only the mechanical build of each bucket.

Every executor subagent — serial or parallel — gets a prompt carrying:

• the verbatim intent anchor (frozen at the gate, embedded unchanged),
• this bucket's scope + done criteria + its place in the graph,
• its concrete working location: "Work only in worktree ../.bucket-ask/<id> on branch bucket/<id> (or, no-worktree rung: edit only these files: …). Commit all your changes on that branch before returning — do not leave the tree dirty; the conductor merges your branch."
• and this boundary: "Build ONLY this bucket. Do not implement, refactor, or anticipate any other bucket. Do not make decisions that touch the intent anchor — if your work forces a departure from the anchor, or you discover a dependency not yet present, do NOT improvise; STOP and return a drift flag naming the conflict."

It returns a tight summary (built / maps-to-done / deviations / drift flag), not a transcript. Use a capable implementation model for executors; keep judgement in the main session. Any returned drift flag is halt #1.

Degradation ladder (capability-aware)

The safety contract is harness-independent — the interview, the single anchor confirmation, the automatic risk gate, and the halt conditions hold on every rung. Only the speed mechanism degrades. Announce the rung up front.

• Full — subagents + worktrees + a detected verify command → parallel, isolated, verified waves exactly as Phase 4 describes.
• Sequential-autonomous — subagents but no worktrees → executors write to the shared branch one at a time; no merge step (so the merge-conflict halt cannot fire); verify after each bucket; still auto-advance on green.
• Inline-autonomous — no subagents, or any non-code / non-repo project (writing, research, single file) → the conductor builds each bucket itself, serially, in wave/dependency order; no worktrees, no merge, no parallelism; verify/confirm done after each bucket; still auto-advances, still honors the halt conditions. You lose parallelism, not autonomy.
• No AskUserQuestion → run the interview and the single gate in plain prose.