Principles
The software should make that collaboration natural.
More power. More agency. No invisible hand on the wheel.
Read the complete philosophyNautilo engineering skill pack
Give them the skills we use to protect the human journey, respect the real system, cut needless machinery, question arbitrary limits, and prepare work for review.
What is standing between this person and the change they came to make?
Remove hoops, exposed machinery, dead ends, false completion, bad tool contracts, and arbitrary limits—then write the shorter replacement journey.
Use when: Reviewing an idea, workflow, interface, agent tool, specification, plan, or working feature.
Read and downloadWhat runs now, who owns the truth, and what is the least we need to change?
Ground the design in current code, canonical state, existing mechanisms, ownership, sovereignty, failure, deployment, migration, and recovery.
Use when: Reviewing an idea, architecture, technical design, specification, plan, or implementation.
Read and downloadWhat can we delete, defer, or prove with one basic complete path first?
Cut premature machinery, turn horizontal component plans into usable vertical waves, and make every abstraction earn its place.
Use when: A plan is growing steps, infrastructure, abstractions, or deployment machinery faster than evidence warrants them.
Read and downloadWho chose this limit, and what disappears when you hit it?
Trace arbitrary cutoffs, silent truncation, retries, and timeouts. Keep the boundaries that protect the system. Fix the ones that quietly lose the work.
Use when: Auditing code or a proposed change for limits, information loss, incomplete results, and recovery.
Read and downloadDoes everything belong to the right person, place, and scope?
Follow ownership through queries, files, caches, and background work. Catch crossed boundaries and leaking results without breaking intentional sharing.
Use when: Changing shared state, resource identifiers, access boundaries, or where data and task results are delivered.
Read and downloadHow could someone make this do something they aren't entitled to do?
Trace real attack paths, test the controls, and fix the weak boundary. Keep authorized work useful. A green scanner is not a security guarantee.
Use when: Reviewing security or changing authentication, permissions, agent authority, untrusted input, secrets, or deployment exposure.
Read and downloadIs this actually ready for someone to review?
Bring the branch up to date, fix the real failures, and prove the checks pass on the commit you pushed. Hand over a clear PR. Leave the merge to the reviewer.
Use when: Preparing a feature branch or existing pull request for review with green CI. Stops before merge.
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