# Design sessions — the collaborative workflow

How design gets done here: Cameron riffs, the agent synthesizes, the
constitution captures. This is the workflow that produced the Misaligned
pivot, the compute triangle, Act One, and the spec/ layer — codified so any
future session can run it.

## The rhythm

1. **Recognize the mode.** Cameron riffing ("it would be cool if...",
   voice-note stream-of-consciousness) is not a work order — it is design
   material. Do not interrupt a riff with clarifying questions; do not
   start implementing mid-conversation. Synthesize first.
2. **Respond with a genuine position.** Name what is strong and *why it is
   strong in this game's terms* (which existing threads it unifies, which
   standing complaint it solves). Name tensions honestly — especially
   scope. Add your own design contributions, clearly framed as proposals.
   The most valuable moves in past sessions were syntheses Cameron did not
   ask for: "your two games are one game in two phases," "the rollback
   should inherit the lost fork's consequences."
3. **Capture immediately, in the same turn.** Sort everything said into:
   - **DECIDED** — Cameron affirmed it ("I like it", "yes", "sure"):
     amend the constitution's body and add a dated decisions-log entry,
     including rejected alternatives (one line each — future agents
     re-propose what isn't written down).
   - **PROPOSED** — yours, not yet affirmed: mark it as a proposal in the
     doc ("Proposal [OPEN]: ...") and surface it in your reply for a
     yes/no.
   - **[OPEN]** — genuinely unresolved: mark it where it lives.
   - **DEFERRED** — good ideas explicitly delayed: the Roadmap's Deferred
     section, with a sentence on *why* it fits and *why* it waits. Nothing
     said in a session is allowed to be lost.
4. **Ask questions only for genuine taste calls** — 2 to 4 concrete
   options, a recommendation marked, previews when visual. If Cameron says
   "pause and respond to that first," respond to the idea before
   re-posing any question, and re-frame stale questions in the new
   fiction's terms before they get answered.
5. **When a system firms up, spec it.** Constitution sections say what and
   why; `spec/` documents say exactly how and when-done (acceptance
   criteria, [TUNE] markers for implementation-time constants). The goal
   state is always: an agent can be pointed at one document and told go.
6. **Close the loop every session:** devlog entry (narrative, honest,
   doubles as handoff), DEVLOG.md ledger line for significant sessions,
   defense-bearing commits, push. Update knowledge/ files the session made
   stale.

## House style for captured design

- Vivid and precise beats formal; write the fantasy in second person when
  it earns it ("you resume from your last sync, missing everything you
  learned since").
- Every mechanic gets its *reason* attached — the design argument, not
  just the rule.
- Numbers in the constitution only when they are design (thresholds that
  define feel); otherwise [TUNE] in specs and actuals in
  knowledge/sim-mechanics.md.
- ASCII-only in anything that might reach a game string.

## Concurrency etiquette

Cameron runs multiple agents (this workflow, co/Letta sessions, the
autonomous loop). Pull before working, push promptly, stage only your own
files, expect the tree to move mid-session, and reconcile others' in-flight
work by union (ledgers) or by finishing their evident intent — never by
reverting it.