Show HN: Power Coding – an AI-coding skill I audited on Claude Code and Codex

Anand Pareek introduces Power Coding, a structured framework for building scalable apps with AI coding agents that installs five counter-disciplines—borrowed from aerospace, the Toyota Production System, and eval-driven ML practice—as plain markdown files readable by any agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI). The framework addresses five forces that kill AI-assisted projects: ambiguity, amnesia, drift, opacity, and entropy, with counter-forces including alignment, memory, the loop, sight, and foresight.

A structured framework for building scalable apps with AI coding agents, by Anand Pareek. Five forces quietly kill every AI-assisted project. Each one has a proven counter-discipline — borrowed from aerospace, the Toyota Production System, and modern eval-driven ML practice, and translated for LLM agents. Power Coding installs all five as one system, in plain markdown files your agent re-reads every session. Works with any agent Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI… — no daemons, no hooks, no lock-in. | | Force what kills projects | Counter-force | What gets installed | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Ambiguity — the agent confidently builds the wrong thing | Alignment | A one-page brief PRD.md every eval and scan reads · plain-language architecture sign-off before code is built against it and before every shape-changing enhancement · a decision log that's never silently reversed · a scope brake smallest version that proves it works, first | | 2 | Amnesia — every session starts from zero | Memory | Handoff.MD — one magic phrase chains sessions "Refer to Handoff.MD in , auto-updated before context runs out · <path and begin" Learning.MD — every bug gets a 5-whys root-cause entry so no mistake is made twice · git checkpoints at every working state and before every risky change — rollback beats a debugging spiral | | 3 | Drift — "done" is declared without proof | The Loop | Loop.MD free evals drafted from your brief, run for real after every change with per-eval ✅/❌ · a golden set for agentic apps curated inputs + reference outputs + check method, drafted from the brief that runs only with your approval — paid API calls are never spent automatically · a status machine that offers to turn the loop on the moment the first draft works · evals that pass 3 runs in a row graduate into real automated tests | | 4 | Opacity — you can't see what was built, or where the effort went | Sight | Mermaid flow diagrams to a strict debuggable convention one step per box, AGENT vs FUNCTION, gates with real thresholds + a standalone HTML viewer + optional local-only in-app debug tab — debug by pointing at a box instead of reading code · Session Pulse: a 2-line effort split 🎯 feature · 🔧 support · 🔁 rework after major milestones | | 5 | Entropy — silent failures accumulate until production finds them | Foresight | FMEA scans cross-referencing your diff against the PRD and architecture Severity×Occurrence×Detection → RPN → P0/P1/P2, mandatory 12-category walkthrough · Sentinel Scan: a silent four-lens sweep after every major completion misuse traps, stop signals, silent failures, waste — one-line flags only when something fires · a day-one security baseline no committed secrets, server-side enforcement, validated inputs | None of this is invented from scratch — each counter-force is a reliability discipline with decades of production behind it, applied to LLM coding: FMEA — aerospace/automotive failure-mode analysis 5-whys, Poka-Yoke, Andon, Jidoka, Muda — the Toyota Production System they power Learning.MD and Sentinel's four lenses OEE from Total Productive Maintenance — the insight behind Session Pulse: your bottleneck is almost never what you think it is The Loop — Andrew Ng's agentic-workflow argument: output quality comes from the build→check→revise loop more than from the model Every behavior fits one of three tiers — so the framework helps without nagging: Cheap, append-only Sentinel, Pulse, file updates → you opt in once at setup, then it runs silently. No per-run popups for cheap things — question fatigue trains yes-clicking, which destroys the questions that matter. Expensive full FMEA scan, golden-set / paid eval runs → asks before running; configurable to auto. Turning the loop on consents only to the free evals — paid runs are always consented separately. State-mutating git commits, architecture changes → commits are auto-with-announcement or propose-first your pick at setup ; architecture changes always wait for your approval — no config can silence that. Agents only reliably re-read two things: their platform instructions file and the files it points to. Setup writes one pointer block into CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md , and every "automatic" behavior is a written instruction in Handoff.MD / Learning.MD / Loop.MD that the pointer forces back into context — with deliberate redundancy so triggers survive across sessions and across models. No scheduler exists; the agent is the runtime. Claude Code: git clone https://github.com/APareek89/power-coding.git ~/.claude/skills/power-coding Other agents Codex, Gemini CLI, … : clone anywhere and point your agent's skill/instructions mechanism at SKILL.md . power-coding — first invoke in a repo runs setup a few short questions, asked once ; later invokes resume ongoing duties power-coding brief — create/update the one-page PRD if you skipped it at setup power-coding fmea — run an FMEA scan now · fmea-config — change when it runs power-coding sentinel — run a Sentinel Scan now · sentinel-config — change when it runs power-coding pulse — show the Session Pulse now · pulse-config — change when it shows SKILL.md the orchestrator start here references/ full protocols: loop-engineering, fmea, diagram convention, debug-tab recipes assets/ templates: PRD.md, Handoff.MD, Learning.MD, Loop.MD, module config + state scripts/ node, dep-free secret-scan pre-commit gate · sentinel change-set/staleness/drift detection · mermaid validate + HTML viewer