playbook

A book of engineering principles for software teams, in five chapters: how a team thinks, what it builds toward, how a day runs, how review works and how to start. About thirty minutes cover to cover.

The Preamble sets five principles, starting with correctness over agreement. Design Rules has eighteen, in four clusters, and The Review reads a change through five lenses.

The book's front page links the full command reference.

why it exists

Code review depends on who is reviewing. Decisions get made in chat and forgotten.

playbook started as instructions saved in text files, then became repeatable commands. Most of those commands build on the book's first two chapters.

what it taught

Quality can be made automatic instead of heroic. A team adopts playbook in its own shape: "Keep the philosophy intact. Customize everything else."

The commands change from their own use. A paused session leaves a recap, and the next one opens on it. Recaps rewrote the step that handles recaps.