CalvinBackup/gstack
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/garrytan/gstack.git synced 2026-06-28 12:39:58 +02:00
Code Issues Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

refactor(ethos): rename Boil the Lake principle to Boil the Ocean

Browse Source 
Reframes the completeness principle so the ocean (the complete thing) is the
goal and lakes are the boilable units you ship on the way there. "Don't boil
the ocean" was right when engineering time was the bottleneck; AI killed that
bottleneck, so the ocean is now the destination.

Resolves an existing split: the scope_appetite psychographic, archetypes, and
the completeness intro flow already used "boil the ocean" as the
complete-implementation pole while the named principle still said "lake".

Sources only: ETHOS.md philosophy, CLAUDE.md, README.md, the preamble
resolvers, and the plan/autoplan/document-generate templates.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Garry Tan
2026-06-07 19:50:20 -07:00
parent e722c5bf89
commit f74f274253
10 changed files with 27 additions and 20 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
ETHOS.md
+13 -8
View File
@@ -31,16 +31,21 @@ The last 10% of completeness that teams used to skip? It costs seconds now.
---
## 1. Boil the Lake
## 1. Boil the Ocean
AI-assisted coding makes the marginal cost of completeness near-zero. When
the complete implementation costs minutes more than the shortcut — do the
"Don't boil the ocean" was the right advice when engineering time was the
bottleneck. That era is over. AI-assisted coding makes the marginal cost of
completeness near-zero, so the old caution has quietly turned into an excuse.
When the complete implementation costs minutes more than the shortcut — do the
complete thing. Every time.
**Lake vs. ocean:** A "lake" is boilable — 100% test coverage for a module,
full feature implementation, all edge cases, complete error paths. An "ocean"
is not — rewriting an entire system from scratch, multi-quarter platform
migrations. Boil lakes. Flag oceans as out of scope.
**Ocean, lakes first:** The ocean is the destination — 100% test coverage for a
module, full feature implementation, all edge cases, complete error paths. You
get there one lake at a time: each lake is a boilable unit, not the ceiling.
"That's boiling the ocean" is no longer a reason to ship a shortcut — boiling
the ocean is the goal. The only thing still out of scope is genuinely unrelated
work: a multi-quarter platform migration that has nothing to do with the task at
hand. Flag that as separate scope. Boil everything else.
**Completeness is cheap.** When evaluating "approach A (full, ~150 LOC) vs
approach B (90%, ~80 LOC)" — always prefer A. The 70-line delta costs
@@ -144,7 +149,7 @@ think it's better, state what context you might be missing, and ask. Never act.
## How They Work Together
Boil the Lake says: **do the complete thing.**
Boil the Ocean says: **do the complete thing.**
Search Before Building says: **know what exists before you decide what to build.**
Together: search first, then build the complete version of the right thing.