Idea-to-Ship Flow

matt pocock’s structured engineering system, distilled. The pipeline from fuzzy idea to shipped code, with each stage preventing a specific failure mode. [source: aihero-dev-homepage-2026]

The pipeline

1. Grill (/grill-with-docs or /grill-me) — relentless interview to sharpen the idea. Prevents: building the wrong thing. See grilling doctrine.
2. Spec (/to-spec) — convert the sharpened conversation into a spec document. Prevents: scope drift mid-build.
3. Tickets (/to-tickets) — break the spec into tracer bullet tickets with blocking edges. Prevents: unreviewable diffs.
4. Implement (/implement per ticket) — build one slice via tdd with agents. Prevents: slop that can’t be verified.
5. Review (/code-review) — review the changes since a fixed point. Prevents: anything that slipped through.

Entry points

• New idea in a repo → Grilling phase first.
• Small well-scoped change → Direct implementation ticket with TDD.
• Bug report → Triage and diagnosis loop.
• Huge foggy effort → Architecture reconnaissance, then merge onto specification.
• Design question → Throwaway prototype.

Why each stage exists

Agents ship fast. Each stage is a checkpoint where reality referees — Feynman’s “nature cannot be fooled” applied to software. Skip a stage and you fool yourself faster, not slower, because the agent amplifies whatever you give it.

Related

grilling doctrine, tracer bullets, tdd with agents, karpathy four guidelines, context engineering.