[IMPORTANT] Use

TaskCreate

to break ALL work into small tasks BEFORE starting.

Critical Thinking Mindset — Apply critical thinking, sequential thinking. Every claim needs traced proof, confidence >80% to act. Anti-hallucination: Never present guess as fact — cite sources for every claim, admit uncertainty freely, self-check output for errors, cross-reference independently, stay skeptical of own confidence — certainty without evidence root of all hallucination.

AI Mistake Prevention — Failure modes to avoid on every task:

• Check downstream references before deleting. Deleting components causes documentation and code staleness cascades. Map all referencing files before removal.
• Verify AI-generated content against actual code. AI hallucinates APIs, class names, and method signatures. Always grep to confirm existence before documenting or referencing.
• Trace full dependency chain after edits. Changing a definition misses downstream variables and consumers derived from it. Always trace the full chain.
• Trace ALL code paths when verifying correctness. Confirming code exists is not confirming it executes. Always trace early exits, error branches, and conditional skips — not just happy path.
• When debugging, ask "whose responsibility?" before fixing. Trace whether bug is in caller (wrong data) or callee (wrong handling). Fix at responsible layer — never patch symptom site.
• Assume existing values are intentional — ask WHY before changing. Before changing any constant, limit, flag, or pattern: read comments, check git blame, examine surrounding code.
• Verify ALL affected outputs, not just the first. Changes touching multiple stacks require verifying EVERY output. One green check is not all green checks.
• Holistic-first debugging — resist nearest-attention trap. When investigating any failure, list EVERY precondition first (config, env vars, DB names, endpoints, DI registrations, data preconditions), then verify each against evidence before forming any code-layer hypothesis.
• Surgical changes — apply the diff test. Bug fix: every changed line must trace directly to the bug. Don't restyle or improve adjacent code. Enhancement task: implement improvements AND announce them explicitly.
• Surface ambiguity before coding — don't pick silently. If request has multiple interpretations, present each with effort estimate and ask. Never assume all-records, file-based, or more complex path.

Prerequisites: MUST ATTENTION READ before executing:

Scan & Update Reference Doc — Surgical updates only, never full rewrite.

1. Read existing doc first — understand current structure and manual annotations
2. Detect mode: Placeholder (only headings, no content) → Init mode. Has content → Sync mode.
3. Scan codebase for current state (grep/glob for patterns, counts, file paths)
4. Diff findings vs doc content — identify stale sections only
5. Update ONLY sections where code diverged from doc. Preserve manual annotations.
6. Update metadata (date, counts, version) in frontmatter or header
7. NEVER rewrite entire doc. NEVER remove sections without evidence they're obsolete.

Output Quality — Token efficiency without sacrificing quality.

1. No inventories/counts — AI can

   grep | wc -l

   . Counts go stale instantly
2. No directory trees — AI can

   glob

   /

   ls

   . Use 1-line path conventions
3. No TOCs — AI reads linearly. TOC wastes tokens
4. No examples that repeat what rules say — one example only if non-obvious
5. Lead with answer, not reasoning. Skip filler words and preamble
6. Sacrifice grammar for concision in reports
7. Unresolved questions at end, if any

Quick Summary

Goal: Scan the project's

docs/

docs/project-reference/docs-index-reference.md

Workflow:

1. Read — Load current target doc, detect init vs sync mode
2. Scan — Count docs by category, discover doc tree structure, trace relationships
3. Generate — Build/update the reference doc with verified counts and paths
4. Verify — Spot-check file counts against actual directory contents

Key Rules:

• Generic — discover everything dynamically, never hardcode project-specific values
• Use

  docs/project-config.json

  for hints if available, fall back to filesystem scanning
• All file counts must be verified via glob, not copied from existing content

Scan Docs Index

Phase 0: Read & Assess

1. Read

   docs/project-reference/docs-index-reference.md

2. Detect mode: init (placeholder only) or sync (has real content)
3. If sync: note which sections exist and current file counts

Phase 1: Scan Documentation Tree

Root-Level Docs

• Glob for

  *.md

  in project root (README.md, CLAUDE.md, CHANGELOG.md, etc.)
• Count and list each with one-line purpose description

docs/ Directory

Scan each subdirectory:

docs/project-reference/**/*.md

docs/business-features/**/*.md

docs/getting-started.md

docs/deployment.md

docs/design-system/**/*.md

docs/test-specs/**/*.md

docs/architecture-decisions/**/*.md

docs/templates/**/*.md

docs/release-notes/**/*.md

.claude/docs/

• Glob for

  .claude/docs/**/*.md

  — count and categorize

Phase 2: Build Doc Relationship Map

Trace key doc relationships by grepping for markdown links between docs:

• Which docs link to which (cross-references)
• Entry points (README → getting-started → deployment chain)
• CLAUDE.md → reference doc pointers

Phase 3: Build Lookup Table

For each

docs/business-features/{App}/

• Extract the app name and key business domain keywords
• Map keywords → directory path for the lookup table

For each

docs/project-reference/*.md

• Extract the domain covered
• Map keywords → file path

Phase 4: Generate Reference Doc

Write to

docs/project-reference/docs-index-reference.md

1. Documentation System — Total count, last scan date
2. Documentation Graph — ASCII tree with file counts per category
3. Key Doc Relationships — ASCII diagram of cross-references
4. Doc Lookup Guide — Keyword-to-path table

Phase 5: Verify

Spot-check 3 file counts:

• docs/business-features/**/*.md

  count matches tree

• docs/project-reference/*.md

  count matches tree
• Root

  *.md

  count matches tree

Output Format

<!-- Last scanned: {YYYY-MM-DD} -->

# Documentation Index Reference

> Auto-generated by `/scan-docs-index`. Do not edit manually.

## Documentation System

{total} markdown files across {N} categories. Last scanned: {date}.

## Documentation Graph

{ASCII tree with counts}

## Key Doc Relationships

{ASCII relationship diagram}

## Doc Lookup Guide

{keyword → path table}

Closing Reminders

• IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION break work into small todo tasks using

  TaskCreate

  BEFORE starting
• IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION search codebase for 3+ similar patterns before creating new code
• IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION cite

  file:line

  evidence for every claim (confidence >80% to act)
• IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION add a final review todo task to verify work quality <!-- SYNC:scan-and-update-reference-doc:reminder -->
• IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION read existing doc first, scan codebase, diff, surgical update only. Never rewrite entire doc. <!-- /SYNC:scan-and-update-reference-doc:reminder --> <!-- SYNC:output-quality-principles:reminder -->
• IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION follow output quality rules: no counts/trees/TOCs, rules > descriptions, 1 example per pattern, primacy-recency anchoring. <!-- /SYNC:output-quality-principles:reminder --> <!-- SYNC:critical-thinking-mindset:reminder -->
• MUST ATTENTION apply critical thinking — every claim needs traced proof, confidence >80% to act. Anti-hallucination: never present guess as fact. <!-- /SYNC:critical-thinking-mindset:reminder --> <!-- SYNC:ai-mistake-prevention:reminder -->
• MUST ATTENTION apply AI mistake prevention — holistic-first debugging, fix at responsible layer, surface ambiguity before coding, re-read files after compaction. <!-- /SYNC:ai-mistake-prevention:reminder -->