pragmatic-programmer

Apply the engineering habits, decision-making posture, and practices from "The Pragmatic Programmer" when the user is asking how to *approach* a programming task, tool, or decision rather than how to write or fix a specific piece of code. Use for questions about engineering judgment and tradeoffs ("should I do X or Y," "how do I decide between A and B"), decoupling and architectural habits, defensive programming posture, debugging *approach* (not just "debug this"), estimation, requirements discovery, prototyping, tool workflows (shell, editor, version control, automation), and project-level practices. Also use when the user seems stuck, is hedging, is "programming by coincidence" without understanding why something works, needs to make a reversible or irreversible decision, or is asking how an experienced engineer would think about a situation. This skill is about engineering habits and judgment, not about line-by-line code critique or mechanical transformation of existing code. Do not use for pure algorithm