Startup Team (2-8 Devs) Rules for Cline

# Startup Team (2-8 Devs) Rules for Cline

# Startup Team Rules (2-8 Developers)

## Code Ownership & Reviews
- Every PR reviewed by at least one other person — no self-merges to main
- PR size limit: 400 lines of production code (tests separate)
- Review SLA: within 1 business day — don't block teammates for days
- Draft PRs for early feedback on direction — not just finished work

## Branching Strategy
- Trunk-based development with short-lived feature branches (<3 days)
- Feature flags for incomplete features merged to main
- No long-lived feature branches — they cause painful merges
- Branch naming: `{type}/{ticket-id}-{short-description}`

## Definition of Done
- [ ] Feature works as specified
- [ ] Tests written (unit + integration for business logic)
- [ ] Reviewed and approved
- [ ] No TypeScript/lint errors
- [ ] Environment variables documented in .env.example
- [ ] Feature flag added if partially complete

## Communication in Code
- Commit messages explain WHY not WHAT — the diff shows what
- Comments for non-obvious decisions (not for obvious code)
- Link to ticket/issue in commit or PR body
- TODO comments must include: name, date, ticket link

## Shared Ownership Areas
- Auth system: whole team understands it — no single expert
- Database schema: migrations reviewed by at least 2 people
- External integrations (payments, email): runbook exists before going live
- Deployment process: any 2 team members can deploy independently

## Incident Response
- Runbook for the 5 most likely outages — written before they happen
- On-call rotation documented and communicated
- Post-mortem for any outage >30 minutes — blameless, action-item focused