SP Engineering Manifesto
Twenty-Two Practices · Three Pillars
What we believe and how we ship at SolidProfessor — every practice in the
Playbook
, on one page. Click any card for the full reasoning.
Technical
12 rules
01
Know your value stream.
Every system has an owning stream. Cross boundaries deliberately.
02
Default to adopt, not build.
Burden of proof on building. Document what you don't.
03
Ship to trunk daily.
Branches under a day. Long branches are debt.
04
Branch as
<type>/<TICKET>
.
The prefix is signal. No ticket, no branch.
05
Two semver rules.
Platforms: calendar/sprint. Packages: change-type.
06
Feature-flag everything risky.
camelCase keys. Cleanup is the stage that gets skipped.
07
Migrations + OTOs only.
Never raw SQL in prod. Don't delete OTO files.
08
Harden the gate.
When CI breaks a new way, prevent it next time.
09
Test behavior, not implementation.
Beyoncé Rule: if you liked it, put a test on it.
10
Tech debt is product-quality work.
Pod-owned. PM-visible. Not a trash bin.
11
AI is a first-draft generator.
Not an author. If you can't explain it, don't ship it.
12
Classify the work honestly.
Bug ≠ Defect. Spikes have a deliverable.
Process
5 rules
13
Keep PRs Elite, one at a time.
Under 225 LOC. Decompose
before
you start.
14
Validate in Preview before merge.
Main always releasable. Stay with your PR.
15
Orthogonal lenses, 90-minute box.
Pint owns formatting. Surface critical issues only.
16
Platform backend rigor.
200/401/403/422 every endpoint. System tests < 2s.
17
Bugs: red → diagnose → green.
Failing test first. Root cause, not symptom.
Culture
5 rules
18
Engineer-mode is the default.
Code is read more than written. Boy Scout Rule.
19
Operate as a Trio.
Co-discover.
"What evidence would change your mind?"
20
Lead through humility.
Build teams that don't depend on you.
21
Engineers are partners in discovery.
Not late-stage implementers. Talk to customers.
22
Use the discovery toolkit.
Interviews, assumption maps, opportunity solution trees.