Purpose & Scope

In one line: Treat the AI as a senior engineer under architectural supervision — not autocomplete, not a substitute for judgment.

This document specifies the S4U Development Methodology: a systematic approach to AI-assisted software engineering. The audience is a senior engineer evaluating whether the methodology earns its overhead. Every practice carries a rationale, and every claim names the artifact that enforces it.

The methodology was forged on multiple production systems and refined into a set of mechanisms — hooks, gates, skills, reviewer agents — that hold regardless of who is at the keyboard. It was itself designed using the lifecycle it describes: brainstormed, specified, planned, implemented, verified, reviewed.

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