pact-engineer

Pact Engineer

Use Pact to make the implementation bet explicit before coding. Keep Pact's contracts and tests authoritative, but treat planning and implementation as a feedback loop rather than a one-way handoff.

Workflow

1. Source ~/.profile when feasible.
2. Start or resume a Kindex session, then search the task and affected domain.
3. Read repository instructions and the relevant implementation, tests, and recent history before framing the change.
4. Normalize vague task language into a concrete problem statement, boundaries, constraints, and acceptance criteria. Use Constrain artifacts when available; otherwise create equivalent prompt.md and constraints.yaml inputs.
5. Run central architecture claims past Simulacrum before locking the frame.
6. Run Pact in plan-only mode and advance it through interview/decomposition until it pauses after contracts and tests:

pact init "$PACT_DIR" --budget 10
pact run "$PACT_DIR" --constrain-dir "$CONSTRAIN_DIR" --plan-only --once

Answer or approve interview questions as needed, then continue pact run --once until the plan-only pause. Do not bypass unresolved ambiguity.

7. Read design.md, .pact/decomposition/tree.json, contracts, visible tests, and generated task lists. Run pact assess on the affected source tree.
8. Render a focused brief before implementing each component:

pact handoff "$PACT_DIR" "$COMPONENT_ID" --validate --max-tokens 2000

9. Implement directly with the active agent. Follow the repository's existing patterns and verify incrementally.
10. Reconcile contracts whenever implementation exposes infeasibility:
    • Stop instead of silently deviating.
    • Record the conflict and the failed assumption in Kindex.
    • Update task/constraints/contracts and regenerate affected tests or rerun Pact plan-only.
    • Resume only after the contract and implementation agree.
11. Run repository tests, type checks, lint, pact validate, and pact audit where applicable.
12. Run post-implementation review:

pact review "$TARGET_REPO" \
  --claim "This change is done because: <specific evidence>"

Treat Advocate critical/high findings and Simulacrum premise rejections as blocking. Fix the work, not merely the wording, then rerun review. 13. Check references/done-gate.md, capture durable decisions and results in Kindex, and end the Kindex session.

Execution Modes

• Default to Pact plan-only plus active-agent implementation.
• Use pact run <project> --implement only when the user explicitly wants Pact to own implementation and integration.
• Use pact build <project> <component> for targeted Pact-managed implementation after plan-only decomposition.
• After three genuine failed approaches or material scope expansion, stop, document the invalid assumption, and choose a simpler contract-satisfying approach or report the blocker.

Review Tool Behavior

pact review persists advocate.json, simulacrum.md, command output, and a machine-readable review.json under .pact/reviews/. Pact uses its packaged Simulacrum runtime and annotated corpus by default; PACT_SIMULACRUM_CMD is an explicit operator override. A successful command means requested tools completed and Advocate returned no critical/high findings; the active agent must still read and adjudicate Simulacrum's response.