Principles
The software should make that collaboration feel effortless.
More power. More agency. No hidden hand on the wheel.
Read the full philosophyOpenCircle engineering skill pack
Hand them the checks we use to protect the person's journey, respect the system that already runs, cut needless machinery, question arbitrary limits and get work ready for review.
01
What stands between this person and the outcome they came here for?
Journey Check treats a workflow as a promise: does it actually carry someone from intent to a usable result? It surfaces extra steps, camouflaged machinery, and dead ends before they ship.
Use when: Reviewing an idea, a workflow, an interface, an agent tool, a spec, a plan, or a feature that already works.
Read and download →02
What already runs, who owns the truth, and what is the smallest change that survives contact with reality?
Systems Check grounds a proposal in the code and state that actually exist today, then asks for the smallest sound change instead of a fresh architecture.
Use when: Reviewing an idea, an architecture, a technical design, a spec, a plan, or an implementation.
Read and download →03
What can we delete, delay, or prove with one small working path first?
Scope Trim is the corrective for plans that are growing infrastructure faster than the evidence justifies. It reslices a roadmap around the smallest result someone can actually use.
Use when: A plan is piling up steps, abstractions, or deployment machinery faster than the evidence for them.
Read and download →04
Who chose this limit, and what disappears the moment someone hits it?
Limit Audit separates a boundary that protects the system from a number someone guessed in a first draft, then decides whether it should stay, move, or go.
Use when: Auditing code or a proposed change for caps, silent truncation, incomplete results, and recovery.
Read and download →05
Does everything belong to the right person, place, and scope — even after the request ends?
Boundary Check follows identity through queries, caches, and background jobs to catch access that leaks across an unintended line, without breaking the sharing that is supposed to happen.
Use when: Changing shared state, resource identifiers, access boundaries, or where results and data get delivered.
Read and download →06
How could someone make this do something they are not entitled to do?
Threat Check turns a change into concrete abuse cases, tests the control that is supposed to stop them, and confirms legitimate work still gets through.
Use when: Reviewing security, or changing authentication, permissions, agent authority, untrusted input, secrets, or deployment exposure.
Read and download →07
Is this actually ready for a person to review?
Ready-for-Review brings a branch current, fixes real failures instead of quieting them, and hands off a clean pull request with checks that are honestly green on the pushed commit — then stops before merge.
Use when: Preparing a feature branch or an open pull request for review, with the checks passing. It stops short of merging.
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