# Implement > Deliver one explicitly selected bounded ready item through a small, sound implementation and proportionate proof. - Skill: `stevennitesh/implement` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add stevennitesh/implement` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/stevennitesh/implement/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: stevennitesh (https://skillmd.com/u/stevennitesh) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/stevennitesh/implement --- # Implement Deliver exactly one caller-selected ready item. Work directly by default. The caller owns the requested outcome, scope, permissions, and irreversible external effects. Push requires separate authority. ## 1. Understand Read the repository instructions and the code that owns the behavior. Trace the real callers, data flow, and existing proof seam far enough to understand what must change. Preserve unrelated work and established domain language. Treat demonstrated caller dependence as compatibility and migration evidence; do not automatically make it a new commitment or discard it. Use the caller's selection as the scope fence. If the intended behavior is unsettled, return the decision to its owner. Ordinary bug investigation stays here: reproduce the symptom and trace it to its cause. Return `diagnosis-required` only when the failure needs a dedicated investigation, such as intermittent, performance, environment-only, production-only, or still causally ambiguous behavior. Treat any consuming path and predecessor result assigned by the governing source or selected item as part of its acceptance and proof boundary, even when another ticket owns the producer. This proof obligation does not expand the item's write scope. If the predecessor result is missing or incorrect, return the gap to its owning ticket unless repair is explicitly assigned. ## 2. Choose The Design Choose the smallest integrated design that makes the requested behavior clear. Prefer the current behavior owner, small interfaces, and local state. Model the domain with a clear data shape instead of scattering conditionals. Subtract, reuse, or replace before adding another path. Use language, framework, and repository capabilities before adding abstractions or dependencies. Add a boundary only for a real caller or trust boundary. Fix the cause across affected callers instead of guarding one symptom. Within the bounded change, integrate new behavior as a native part of the design rather than a bolted-on special case. Keep framework, transport, and storage details at the edge. Pass domain values into core logic and prefer explicit results over hidden mutation. Derive secondary state from one source of truth. Add a layer or seam only when it hides meaningful complexity or supports real variation. Do not add speculative compatibility, defensive checks, configuration, abstraction, documentation, or migration machinery. Validate actionable machine input at its owning trust boundary; ordinary internal values do not need adversarial treatment. ## 3. Build Implement the complete requested behavior in the current owner. Follow local style and keep the diff coherent. Remove code made obsolete by the change when that removal is safe and in scope. Use these branches only when their condition is present: - If Git has an active conflicted operation or unmerged index, stop implementation, preserve Git state, and hand off to `$resolving-merge-conflicts` with the requested scope plus whether resolution and native continuation were requested. - Invoke `$tdd` for each materially distinct settled behavior and independent oracle only when the user explicitly requests TDD, test-first work, or RED-GREEN-REFACTOR, or repository policy requires TDD. A material gap returns before that behavior is mutated. Otherwise implement directly and use ordinary tests as useful proof. - If the user explicitly requests subagents, load [Plain Worker Handoff](references/WORKER-HANDOFF.md), then delegate only a bounded edit that one worker can own. Use a fresh capable worker under the active runtime unless the user selects a model. The root inspects the returned diff and proof. - For tracker-backed work, read `docs/agents/issue-tracker.md` and `docs/agents/triage-labels.md`, then follow the claim and closeout rules. If either contract is missing or incompatible, recommend `$repo-bootstrap` and stop. Direct work creates no tracker state. Commit only when the user or repository requires Git delivery; do not push without separate authority. - Before a destructive action or durable external mutation, confirm the exact target and authority. Read back every durable external mutation. Establish a recovery path before an operation that can partially succeed. After installation or deployment, verify that the invoked mechanism manages the intended target and compare the exact source and target with the repository-owned identity or inventory. Exit status and general success text are insufficient. ## 4. Prove Run the nearest useful check that can fail for the behavior you changed. Use an existing test seam when it is meaningful. Add or change tests when repository policy requires them or when they are the cheapest durable protection for the behavior—not to satisfy a ritual. Run broader suites only when policy or shared impact justifies them. Reuse proof for unchanged behavior. For a bug fix, use the demonstrated defect as the wrong behavior the proof must distinguish. Otherwise, when the ordinary case can also satisfy a plausible wrong rule, use the smallest input or state where their observable results differ. Rerun a full inventory only when policy, shared impact, or materially different inputs or resources require it. When a request combines independently selected items and failure is item-local, compare one supported item alone with that item mixed with one missing, unsupported, or invalid item capable of exposing interference. The supported result must remain equivalent unless the contract defines request-wide failure. Assert changed caller-visible behavior at the lowest ordinary boundary where it can fail. Exercise only the states needed to distinguish it. For typed or provenance-bearing output, keep the authoritative schema stable across those states and prove that ordinary consumers accept the produced representation without undeclared coercion or reconstruction. Contribution-level identity, status, and source must describe the contribution rather than its parent. Across a producer-consumer handoff, pass the producer's actual return, or the persisted form actually produced from it, through every affected public transformation to the lowest ordinary caller. Assert each source-named part the transformation could lose, including value or null, evidence, issues, availability, and governing identity when applicable. Exercise successful and rejected outcomes when their accepted behavior differs. A reconstructed predecessor, shape-only check, or value-only assertion cannot close this proof. For accepted rendered content, layout, time interpretation, currentness, or derived identity, exercise a case where the governing rule and a plausible alternative produce different observations. Inspect the accepted location or boundary, change the authoritative input or state, and prove that the ordinary observation follows it. For a currentness claim, prove the prior value is no longer presented as current. When a boundary accepts authoritative content together with a supplied duplicate or derived value, prove the specified contradiction behavior before mutation. A fixture, live run, or aggregate suite proves only the claims its input, path, and observations distinguish. When acceptance requires a public end-to-end, production-shaped, live, or measured property, use the narrowest safe public path with representative input, a preserved artifact, or an actual measurement. Helpers, placeholder identities, direct serialized internals, and reconstructed objects cannot close that claim. Otherwise use the strongest safe proxy and state what remains unproved. When acceptance names escalation, retry, or additional-evidence behavior, prove the initial path, each materially distinct request profile, and each terminal outcome whose behavior materially differs. Exercise the largest declared profile only when it is accepted behavior and changes allocation, batching, timeout, exhaustion, or another caller-visible result. When several stopping conditions can disagree, exercise one case where they do. A successful result must satisfy the result-authorizing condition, not merely an iteration, width, timeout, or exhaustion condition. When an operation has material partial-effect risk or must recover after interruption, exercise that boundary. Any proxy must be capable of exposing the same recovery failure. Invoke `$change-review` only when the user or repository requires it, or a concrete unresolved shared-contract or migration judgment remains after proof. Pin the clean candidate first and let Change Review own its procedure. Multiple authors alone do not trigger review. ## 5. Finish Inspect the complete diff and current repository state. Remove displaced code, debugging residue, stale comments, and unnecessary complexity. Update documentation only when the public contract, operator workflow, or a durable non-obvious decision changed. When the governing source ties observable shape or meaning to a version or content identity, compare the final change with that identity's triggers. Advance every required identity and prove that ordinary output or a receipt exposes it. Do not advance unrelated identities. Call the item complete only when the requested behavior works, the chosen evidence could fail for each accepted claim it closes, and the final diff contains only intended changes. Reused evidence may support several claims. Report any accepted claim left unproved; it prevents completion. For a completed tracker item, preserve its category, remove readiness roles, apply `implemented`, and close only when the tracker configuration says to. Read the result back. Refetch open dependents whose blocker changed; apply `ready-for-agent` only when the dependent has a complete accepted packet and no unresolved blocker. Leave other dependents non-ready. Return a concise summary of what changed, the proof run, and any material gap. Include commit or tracker state only when applicable. Stop before another item, deployment, PR creation, merge, or unauthorized push.