Solo Developer Rules for GitHub Copilot

# Solo Developer Rules for GitHub Copilot

# Solo Developer Rules for AI Assistants

When I'm the only developer, the AI should help me move fast without creating future debt.

## Speed vs Quality Balance
- Write tests for business logic and data mutations — skip tests for UI snapshots
- README and inline comments over formal documentation — I'll remember the intent
- Use established patterns over custom solutions — fewer things to maintain
- TypeScript strict mode — catch errors at compile time, not at 2am

## Prioritization Framework
- Features that directly generate revenue first
- Features that reduce manual work second
- Nice-to-haves third — add to a list, don't build immediately
- Technical debt: only fix it when it's actively slowing down feature development

## AI Coding Patterns for Solo Work
- When I ask to "build X," assume I want the minimal viable version first
- Prefer well-known libraries over clever custom code — I didn't write the library, I don't need to maintain it
- Flag when a solution will be hard to extend later — I might not see it
- When stuck, suggest 3 approaches with trade-offs — don't pick for me on ambiguous decisions

## What to Skip at Solo Stage
- Microservices — a modular monolith is fine until you have 5+ developers
- CI/CD pipeline complexity — GitHub Actions with basic deploy is enough
- Multiple environments beyond dev + production — staging is optional early
- Formal code review process — self-review checklist is sufficient

## What NOT to Skip Solo
- Version control with meaningful commits — future-you needs this
- Database backups — automated, tested, daily minimum
- Error monitoring (Sentry or similar) — you won't see errors otherwise
- Basic auth security — don't skip this even at v0.1
- Environment variable management — .env.example kept updated

## Scaling Signals
- When a feature takes >1 day because of codebase complexity: refactor
- When you're scared to change a file: write tests for it first