Session 5
Summarize, Then Act
After discussion, lock a short owned plan, then implement. Conversation thinks; the summary endures.
- Write a short owned summary after talk
- Separate chat alignment from durable plan
- Hand off into implementation only after ownership
- Know when exact steps should be prescribed
A situation you may recognize
The soft-delete talk went well. Door A feels right. Blast radius is named. Next step is clear.
You are tempted to say “go implement” and trust the scrollback.
Two days later, a fresh session (or a tired you) cannot find the decisions. The agent invents Door B again. Or it implements Door A and “helpfully” touches billing. Alignment that lived only in chat drifted.
Talk → summarize → act
Conversation does the thinking in small bites. The summary is the durable artifact. Action comes third.
| Stage | Job |
|---|---|
| Talk | Aim attention, decide forks, surface blast radius |
| Summarize | Lock what you own in a short artifact |
| Act | Implement against that artifact |
Skip summarize, and you ask coding-mode attention to reconstruct decisions from memory. That is how good talks become bad diffs.
A summary template for soft delete
Keep it short enough to retell:
Destination:
- Soft delete + restore for user accounts
- Soft-deleted users cannot sign in
- Default lists hide soft-deleted users
Chosen road:
- deleted_at on users
- Reuse current user/admin paths
- No archive table, no purge job
Blast radius / rails:
- Auth + sessions must revoke or reject
- Do not modify billing schema
- Match organizations soft-delete if present
Next step:
- Inspect current user delete + auth paths, then draft the migration plan details
Do not start broad implementation until this summary is accepted.That is not a formal novel. It is an owned contract the next session can load.
Not yet. Ask for (or write) the five-to-fifteen line summary above. Then say: implement against this summary only. Chat agreement without an artifact is easy to lose.
When to prescribe exact steps
Sometimes the road itself is already decided: ADR, migration playbook, security checklist. Then the summary can be more prescriptive:
Implement the accepted soft-delete road. Do not propose alternatives.
Required: deleted_at, default filters, login reject, session revoke, admin restore, no billing changes.
Stop and ask if any step conflicts with the repo.That is not Session 1’s anxious GPS invented before discovery. It is a settled road written down after talk (or after an ADR). Prescribing here is the job.
| Mode | When | Artifact |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Path still open | Summary of chosen door + blast radius |
| Compliance | Path settled | Prescribed steps + verify |
Hand off into action
Only after the summary exists:
- Start a focused implementation session (or continue with a clear “implement against summary” brief)
- Keep the summary in the prompt or in a file the agent can read
- Verify against destination and blast-radius rails, not vibes
For verification ladders and repo rules after code exists, use AI-Native Engineering, especially Verify Before Merge.
Before Session 6
Session 6 collects the arc, a quiz, and a practice loop: Talk → summarize → act on one real task.