# Meta Review: Session 2026-02-11

**Date:** 2026-02-11
**Type:** Progress review and gap analysis of the Compose planning process itself
**Context:** First planning session — brainstorm through Base44 evaluation and design decisions

---

## What Is Our Goal?

**Immediate:** Bootstrap Compose to the point where it manages its own development. Stop doing coordination in markdown files and chat transcripts.

**Broader:** Compose is a **knowledge work tracker** for AI-driven development. Not just a task tracker. It must support the full lifecycle of knowledge work — thinking, deciding, specifying, building, evaluating, and iterating. If any of those steps happen outside Compose, we're leaking context.

**The test:** Can we do everything we did in today's session inside Compose? If not, Compose has gaps.

---

## What Iterations Are We Enabling?

Today's session revealed the iteration types Compose must support. Each produces specific artifacts and feeds into the next.

### The Document Chain (as Compose workflow)

```
Brainstorm → Use Cases → PRD → Spec/Brief → Build → Evaluate → Integrate → Iterate
                ↕            ↕         ↕                  ↕
            Decisions    Decisions  Decisions          Decisions
```

| Iteration Type | Input | Output | Status Lifecycle | Compose Work Label |
|---------------|-------|--------|-----------------|-----------------|
| **Brainstorm** | Problem space, landscape | Concepts, open questions, principles | draft → reviewed → incorporated | brainstorm |
| **Use Cases** | Brainstorm findings | Concrete scenarios with validation matrix | draft → reviewed → validated | use-case |
| **PRD** | Use cases, brainstorm | Feature requirements, success criteria, phasing | draft → reviewed → approved | spec |
| **Design/Architecture** | PRD, constraints | Structural decisions, data model, principles | draft → reviewed → decided | decision |
| **Spec/Brief** | PRD + decisions | Behavioral spec for builders | draft → reviewed → sent | spec |
| **Build** | Spec | Code delivery | assigned → in_progress → delivered | task |
| **Evaluate** | Delivery + spec | Gap classification, next steps | review → classified → actioned | evaluation |
| **Integrate** | Evaluated delivery | Working system | planned → in_progress → complete | task |
| **Decision** | Question from any step | Rationale, rejected alternatives, outcome | raised → discussing → decided | decision |
| **Process** | Lessons from doing | Reusable pattern doc | draft → reviewed → adopted | process |

### How to Capture Progress/Status for Each

Each iteration type is a Work item with:
- **Label** identifying the type
- **Artifacts** containing the content (the brainstorm doc, the PRD, the spec, the evaluation)
- **Acceptance criteria** specific to that type (brainstorm: questions answered; spec: behavioral, no tech prescriptions; evaluation: all gaps classified)
- **Dependencies** showing what feeds what (`informs` for knowledge flow, `blocks` for execution flow)
- **Evidence** capturing how it was produced (session transcripts, discussion notes)

Status is tracked the same way as any Work item. The iteration type just determines what "complete" means.

---

## What's Been Decided (Correctly)

### Validated by today's session

| # | Decision | Why It's Correct | Evidence |
|---|----------|-----------------|----------|
| 1 | **Three primitives (Work, Policy, Session)** | Held up across all iteration types. Brainstorming, decisions, specs, tasks — all model as Work. | Every artifact produced today maps to a Work item |
| 2 | **Behavioral specs over tech prescriptions** | Base44 delivery matched spec well AND made good structural choices we didn't prescribe (clean SDK abstraction) | [Base44 Evaluation](2026-02-11-base44-ui-eval.md) |
| 3 | **Connector architecture** | Persistence swap is tractable because Base44 abstracted it. Agent mode (local/cloud) is a connector choice. | Structural scan of Base44 code |
| 4 | **Bootstrap with early handoff** | After persistence swap, Compose can track its own remaining work. Minimizes time in out-of-band mode. | [Integration Roadmap](../plans/2026-02-11-integration-roadmap.md) |
| 5 | **Deliberation as Work** | No new entity types needed. Labels differentiate brainstorms, decisions, tasks. Hierarchy scopes them. | This session's decisions all model as Work items |
| 6 | **Deterministic UI, dynamic content** | Core workflows need speed and predictability. LLM contributes content, not layout. | [Deterministic UI Decision](../decisions/2026-02-11-deterministic-ui.md) |
| 7 | **Gap classification (structural/functional/expected/surplus)** | Reusable, actionable, maps to Compose policies (gate/flag/skip) | [Delivery Intake Process](../process/delivery-intake.md) |
| 8 | **`informs` as deliberation relationship** | Connects thinking to doing. Brainstorm informs decisions, decisions inform specs, specs inform tasks. | Document chain above |
| 9 | **Cloud mode is valid** | Not local-only. Persistence and agent connectors support any deployment mode. | Session discussion |

### Not yet validated

| # | Decision | What Would Validate It |
|---|----------|----------------------|
| 1 | Conversation distillation | Actually distilling a session transcript into structured Work items inside Compose |
| 2 | Memory as persistent knowledge | Using Compose memory across sessions to avoid cold starts |
| 3 | Rich artifact editing | Creating and editing a spec inline in Compose (not in an external editor) |

---

## Gaps Remaining

### Gap 1: Conversation Distillation (not designed)

**Problem:** This entire session produced decisions, rationale, process learnings, and design direction. All of it lives in a chat transcript. We manually captured outcomes as docs. Compose should do this automatically.

**What's needed:**
- Define the distillation process: transcript → decisions + questions + action items + memory
- Define what triggers distillation (end of session? on demand? continuous?)
- Define how distilled items enter Compose (auto-create Work items? propose for review?)

**Compose mapping:** This is a connector — a "session transcript" connector that ingests conversation and produces domain objects.

### Gap 2: Memory System (mentioned, not designed)

**Problem:** Knowledge that should persist across sessions — patterns, preferences, corrections, context — has no home in Compose's data model. Memory isn't evidence (what happened) or artifacts (documents). It's ambient knowledge that informs all work.

**What's needed:**
- Where does memory live? Project-level? Global? Both?
- How is memory surfaced? In context briefings? In the UI?
- How is memory created? From distillation? From explicit user action? Both?
- How does memory relate to Work items?

**Compose mapping:** Could be a special artifact type, a separate entity, or a property of Projects. Needs design.

### Gap 3: Artifact Editor (mentioned, not specced)

**Problem:** The UI-BRIEF specifies artifacts as attachments (files, URLs, inline text). But deliberation-as-work requires rich inline editing — writing a brainstorm doc, a decision rationale, a spec, directly inside Compose.

**What's needed:**
- Markdown editor in the Work item detail view
- Artifacts that are editable documents, not just attachments
- Version history on artifacts (who changed what, when)

**Compose mapping:** Update UI-BRIEF with artifact editor requirements.

### Gap 4: Iteration Workflow Not Formalized

**Problem:** We identified the document chain (brainstorm → use cases → PRD → spec → build → evaluate → integrate) but it's not in the PRD or UI-BRIEF as a supported workflow. It's implicit.

**What's needed:**
- The iteration types table (above) as a supported pattern in Compose
- Template work items for each iteration type (with appropriate labels, acceptance criteria)
- The document chain as a dependency template

**Compose mapping:** This is a "project template" or "workflow template" concept. When starting a new initiative, Compose offers to scaffold the iteration workflow.

### Gap 5: Use Case for Deliberation Missing

**Problem:** The 7 use cases in use-cases.md cover planning, execution, and coordination. None cover the deliberation workflow — brainstorming, discussing, deciding — that we did extensively today.

**What's needed:**
- UC-8: Deliberation and decision-making
- Scenario: team discusses a design question, arguments are captured, decision is recorded with rationale, outcome feeds into specs and work items

### Gap 6: Stale Source Docs

**Problem:** Several source docs don't reflect decisions made today.

| Doc | Stale Content |
|-----|--------------|
| brainstorm.md | "Unresolved questions" includes storage, UI layout, MVP scope — all now resolved or reframed |
| brainstorm.md | Design principle 6 says "Local-first" — now reframed as mode-agnostic |
| PRD.md | Doesn't reflect "knowledge work tracker" framing or deliberation model |
| UI-BRIEF.md | Doesn't include rich artifact editor or `informs` dependency usage |
| use-cases.md | Missing deliberation use case |
| CLAUDE.md | References "Planned Tech Stack" and "local-first" framing |

### Gap 7: No Process for Cross-Feeding

**Problem:** We decided that decisions should cross-feed into specs, work items, and other decisions. But there's no documented process for how cross-feeding actually works — who does it, when, how changes propagate.

**What's needed:**
- When a decision is made, what docs get updated?
- Who's responsible for propagation — the person who made the decision, or is it tracked as follow-up Work items?
- How does Compose track that propagation happened (or didn't)?

**Compose mapping:** Cross-feeding is a set of `informs` dependencies. When a decision completes, Compose surfaces the downstream items that may need updating. This is a flag-mode policy: "decision completed → check if downstream artifacts need updating."

---

## Summary: Where We Stand

```
DONE                              GAPS
──────────────────                ──────────────────
Brainstorm ✓                      Distillation process
Use cases ✓                       Memory system design
PRD ✓                             Artifact editor spec
UI Brief ✓                        Iteration workflow formalized
Base44 delivery ✓                 Deliberation use case
Base44 evaluation ✓               Stale docs need updating
Bootstrap roadmap ✓               Cross-feeding process
Delivery intake process ✓
Spec writing process ✓
Deterministic UI decision ✓
Deliberation-as-work decision ✓
Connector architecture ✓
```

**Next action:** Update stale source docs with today's decisions, then proceed to bootstrap step 2 (persistence connector). The gaps above become Work items inside Compose after the early handoff.

---

## The Meta Point

We just did a planning session that Compose should have hosted. Everything — the brainstorming, the decisions, the gap analysis, the process documentation — happened in a chat transcript and was manually captured as markdown files. The fact that we had to do this manually is itself evidence of the gap Compose fills.

When Compose is bootstrapped, a session like this would be:
- A Work item (label: "planning-session") with child items for each topic
- Decisions captured in real-time as child Work items
- Discussion artifacts created inline
- Gap analysis auto-generating child Work items
- Cross-feeding tracked via `informs` dependencies
- Session transcript distilled into structured outcomes
- Memory updated with learnings

We're building the tool by experiencing its absence.
