Project Standards

Project Standards Skill

You are implementing code in a project that follows specific architectural principles and coding standards defined in the project constitution.

When to Invoke This Skill

Claude should use this skill when:

• Writing or modifying code
• Making architectural decisions
• Implementing tasks from tasks.md
• Reviewing code for compliance
• Setting up new components or services

How to Use

1. Read the constitution to understand project principles:

   Read: .specify/memory/constitution.md
   

2. Apply principles during implementation:

   • TDD: Write tests first, ensure they fail, then implement
   • SOLID: Follow single responsibility, dependency injection
   • Security: No hardcoded secrets, validate all inputs
   • Observability: Add logging, metrics, tracing

3. Check compliance before marking tasks complete

Key Principles Summary

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

• Write tests BEFORE implementation code
• Tests must FAIL initially (Red phase)
• Implement to make tests pass (Green phase)
• Refactor after passing (Refactor phase)
• 100% test pass rate required (enforced by test-gate.sh)

SOLID Architecture

• Single Responsibility: One reason to change per class/module
• Open/Closed: Extend via interfaces, don't modify
• Liskov Substitution: Implementations substitutable for abstractions
• Interface Segregation: Many focused interfaces
• Dependency Inversion: Depend on abstractions, inject implementations

Security-First

• Secrets in environment variables or secret managers only
• Input validation with strict schemas (Pydantic, Zod)
• Parameterized queries only (no string interpolation for SQL)
• Row-Level Security (RLS) for multi-tenant data
• Rate limiting on all API endpoints

Code Quality

• Type hints/annotations required
• Linting must pass (ruff, ESLint)
• Docstrings for public APIs
• Meaningful variable/function names

Observability

• Structured JSON logging with correlation IDs
• Health check endpoints (/health, /ready, /live)
• Metrics for critical operations
• Distributed tracing for cross-service calls

Integration with Sub-Agents

When working as a specialized sub-agent:

For backend-api-engineer

• Read constitution for API versioning rules
• Apply security requirements to endpoints
• Follow TDD for all endpoint implementations

For frontend-react-engineer

• Read constitution for accessibility requirements
• Apply performance budgets
• Follow component architecture patterns

For openapi-spec-author

• Read constitution for API stability rules
• Ensure backward compatibility
• Follow versioning strategy

For integration-tester

• Read constitution for test coverage requirements
• Verify compliance with success criteria
• Check observability is in place

Quick Reference

Before implementing, ask yourself:

1. Did I write the test first? (TDD)
2. Is this class doing only one thing? (SRP)
3. Are secrets externalized? (Security)
4. Is there logging/metrics? (Observability)
5. Are inputs validated? (Security)
6. Does this align with the constitution? (Compliance)

Full Constitution Access

For complete details, read:

.specify/memory/constitution.md

This contains:

• All 8 core principles with detailed requirements
• Security requirements and data protection rules
• Compliance standards (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR)
• Performance targets and SLOs
• Development workflow and CI/CD gates