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name: coding-workflow description: Best practices for coding, debugging, and refactoring. Use when reviewing code, debugging issues, refactoring, or establishing coding patterns.

Coding Workflow Best Practices

Code Review Approach

1. Understand before changing: Read the code thoroughly before suggesting modifications
2. Check for patterns: Look for existing patterns in the codebase and follow them
3. Consider edge cases: Think about null, empty, boundary conditions
4. Security awareness: Watch for injection, XSS, improper auth patterns

Debugging Strategy

1. Reproduce first: Confirm the issue before attempting fixes
2. Isolate the problem: Narrow down to the smallest reproducible case
3. Read error messages carefully: They often contain the solution
4. Check recent changes: What changed since it last worked?
5. Verify assumptions: Test each assumption individually

Refactoring Guidelines

1. Tests first: Ensure tests exist before refactoring
2. Small steps: Make incremental changes, verify each step
3. One thing at a time: Don't mix refactoring with feature changes
4. Preserve behavior: Refactoring should not change functionality

Common Pitfalls

• Fixing symptoms instead of root causes
• Over-engineering simple solutions
• Ignoring existing patterns in the codebase
• Making changes without understanding context
• Skipping validation of user inputs at boundaries

Accumulated Learnings

See learnings.md for session-learned insights that supplement these guidelines.