Design Philosophy

[rosmur]

Is there an existing place for (first class, formal) discussions on design philosophy? If no, can this be it - as this is intended to be a truly FOSS and community-led effort, these discussions are more important than the code.

Specific items that I think are critical to discuss:

1. Modes: Support for different modes such as architect, coder, reviewer, debugger etc. (Eg: Roo)
2. Engineering approach: Each mode Follows a predefined best practice workflow such as research->plan-> implement (Anthropic's recommendation), Spec driven development etc.
3. Observability: First class support for showing critical metrics such as context window state, ongoing sessions etc
4. Framework: Exist within or bootstrap or recommend a framework of version control, pre-commit, CI/CD, worktrees, unique git author tag or user for AI,
5. Tools: First class inbuilt basic and universally necessary tools such as file access, git, gh (instead of uncessarily relying on MCPs for this which just causes bloat)

[will-lamerton]

Hi, we don't have a place yet for discussions on design philosophy so this is a great idea and I completely agree.

Myself, personally am very happy to democratise this process, have open discussions and move forward based on majority consensus.

My thoughts on your above points:

1. "Modes: Support for different modes such as architect, coder, reviewer, debugger etc. (Eg: Roo)" - agreed, this is a requested feature and currently sits on the issues board as issue Feature: Adding Auto-Accept and Plan Mode #26. There is a rough spec for this on here but, further refinement is encouraged.
2. "Engineering approach: Each mode Follows a predefined best practice workflow such as research->plan-> implement (Anthropic's recommendation), Spec driven development etc." - again, agreed. There are many ways we can tackle this. One obvious framework is to work on the system prompting and frameworks in which models work within. I'll be opening a discussion on this particular part soon.
3. "Observability: First class support for showing critical metrics such as context window state, ongoing sessions etc" – my personal opinion is we need more of this. There is some metric tracking already for users but I for one would love more as these metrics help make informed decisions during sessions.
4. "Tools: First class inbuilt basic and universally necessary tools such as file access, git, gh (instead of unnecessarily relying on MCPs for this which just causes bloat)" - I think we need more, refined tools. There are currently the basics but a discussion on how far we go over MCPs is necessary.