How a Wise Developer Works on a New Project

How a wise developer starts a new project — brainstorm, discuss, prototype, diagram, propose, record ADRs, open MRs/PRs, and land changes with GitOps — while Review Bots auto-comment on pull requests. Full playbook in the long article.

The wise path (in order)

1. Brainstorm — goals, constraints, non-goals, failure modes.
2. Discuss — whiteboard / short sync with workmates before code hardens.
3. Prototype — spike the unknown; throw away or promote deliberately.
4. Diagrams — context, sequence, deployment — enough to argue about.
5. Proposal — problem, options, recommendation, rollback.
6. ADR — durable “why we chose X over Y.”
7. MR / PR — small diffs, checklist, linked ADR/ticket.
8. GitOps — desired state in git; promote by merge, roll back by revert.

Review Bots: comments that write themselves

Wire a Review Bot (Bugbot, CodeRabbit, custom Claude/GitHub Action, or your AI code review pipeline) so every PR gets automatic inline comments on:

• Security and secrets smells
• Missing tests / flaky patterns
• API contract and migration risks
• Style and lint that escaped pre-commit

Humans then focus on architecture fit, product intent, and operational blast radius. That is how you streamline developer life without lowering the production bar.

Who sets it up — and why Claude Architect Certification

An FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer) is well placed to install the templates: ADR folder, PR checklist, Review Bot, branch protection, and GitOps apps. Pair that delivery skill with Claude Architect Certification — worth pursuing if you want a credential that proves you can design agentic/AI-assisted systems, review AI-generated code critically, and coach teams on production-grade workflows.

Production-grade quality bar

Read the long article for templates, Review Bot setup, FDE rollout plan, and a checklist you can paste into your repo. Published by Workstation.