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engineer — the orchestrator

← Book index · run the whole lifecycle in one call, resumably

What it is: the entry point for any multi-step work. It doesn't do everything itself — it detects, triages, sequences the other skills, enforces the gates, and guarantees nothing is skipped or falsely claimed done.

How it works

flowchart TD
  S[start / resume] --> P0[first run? capture project profile once]
  P0 --> SC[scan repo + chat → detection report]
  SC --> T{size & intent triage}
  T -->|small| QF[construct → verify, own branch] --> SUM
  T -->|fix on running system| EV[production evidence first §19] --> BIG
  T -->|big| BIG[define ⛔ → blueprint ⛔]
  BIG --> BLD[construct per task → verify]
  BLD --> REV[inspect · harden if security-sensitive]
  REV --> REL[release — GO/NO-GO]
  REL --> SUM[change summary + risks → your commit approval]
  SUM -->|loop mode| S

On resume, it walks the ledger backward first: every phase marked done is re-proven (tests re-run, approvals verified) before any new work.

Best cases

  • "Build X" with no plan yet — greenfield or feature; it plans first, then builds.
  • "Continue" — after any interruption, days or machines later.
  • A backlog — loop mode runs task after task with a commit gate between each.
  • A fix on production — it pulls the evidence (logs/metrics/queries) before deciding.

Examples

itqan:engineer "add per-API-key rate limiting to the public API"
itqan:engineer "continue"
itqan:engineer "orders sometimes lose their discount — find how often and fix it"

What you get

Detection report → stated role → both approval gates → TDD build with evidence → review → GO/NO-GO — every artifact in engineering/tasks/NNNN-…/, every change in the feature changelog, and your commit approval at the end.

Hand-offs

Calls all six phase skills; routes ideation to discover, UI intake to design, security- sensitive changes to harden automatically. Already-planned single tasks and one-liners belong to construct directly.

Pro tips: answer the orchestration questions once, in one exchange with the build-ambition ask — multi/single · loop/step · commit consent gate/pre-approved (plus loop-auto in loop mode) — they're remembered per run. In loop mode you may explicitly opt into auto-commit+push per task for hands-off backlogs.