Quickstart — Your First Heist

This guide walks you through a complete Heist cycle — the Gangsta way to build a feature. By the end, you'll understand how the 6 phases work together and why structured development beats ad-hoc coding.

Step 1: Express Your Intent

Start a fresh session with your AI tool and tell it what you want to build:

"I want to add a user authentication system to my app"

That's it. The 1% Rule kicks in automatically — the agent recognizes this as a "build something new" intent and invokes gangsta:reconnaissance.

Step 2: Reconnaissance

The agent deploys its intel-gathering skills:

• Scans your codebase for existing patterns, dependencies, and architecture
• Identifies relevant files, conventions, and constraints
• Produces a Dossier — a structured report of findings
• Asks you to approve the Dossier before proceeding

Step 3: The Grilling

The agent runs an adversarial debate — a Proposer argues for the best approach while a Devil's Advocate challenges every assumption. This surfaces edge cases, risks, and trade-offs you might miss in a single-pass design.

Output: Grilling Conclusions documenting the winning approach and rejected alternatives.

Step 4: The Sit-Down

Now the agent drafts the Contract — a formal specification document:

• What will be built (scope)
• What won't be built (out of scope)
• Acceptance criteria
• Architectural decisions
• Applicable constitution rules

You review and sign the Contract — this is the law that governs all subsequent implementation.

Step 5: Resource Development

The agent decomposes the Contract into a War Plan:

• Breaks work into parallel task packages
• Assigns territories (domains of responsibility)
• Allocates resources and subagents
• Identifies dependencies between tasks

You approve the War Plan, and execution begins.

Step 6: The Hit

Soldier subagents execute the War Plan in parallel:

• Each soldier implements their assigned tasks
• Test-Driven Development (gangsta:drill-tdd) enforces Red-Green-Refactor
• Budget tributes are tracked per task
• Code respects the Contract — deviations require a spec revision

Step 7: Laundering

The Consigliere reviews all deliverables:

• Code review against the Contract
• Integration testing
• The Ledger is updated with insights and fails
• Production-ready code is delivered

The Full Pipeline

Here's what your first Heist looks like end-to-end:

Continue to the Heist Pipeline →