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evanklem2004today at 1:56 AM4 repliesview on HN

Built this as an opinionated Claude Code development flow based on evidence based practices and what has been working for me while developing professional code.

EvanFlow is a single TDD-driven loop. Say "let's evanflow this" and it walks brainstorm → plan → execute → tdd → iterate → STOP. Real checkpoints at design and plan approval. Never auto-commits, never auto-stages, never proposes integration - every git op is your call.

The three things that actually changed how I work:

1. Vertical-slice TDD. One failing test → minimal impl → next test. Watch each test fail before writing the impl that passes it. (Sounds obvious. Almost no agent does it by default. ~62% of LLM-generated test assertions are wrong per HumanEval research, so testing TDD discipline matters more than the impl discipline.)

2. Embedded grilling at decision points. Before locking a plan: what breaks if a user does X? What's the rollback? What's explicitly out of scope? Catches design flaws while they're still cheap.

3. Iterate-until-clean (hard cap of 5 rounds). Re-read the diff against dead code, naming, the deletion test, assertion correctness, and a Five Failure Modes pass (hallucinated actions, scope creep, cascading errors, context loss, tool misuse). For UI: screenshot via headless Chromium.

For bigger plans with 3+ independent units sharing types, it forks into a parallel coder/overseer orchestration. Integration tests at touchpoints ARE the cohesion contract.

Three install paths: Claude Code plugin marketplace, npx skills add, manual copy. MIT.


Replies

girvotoday at 5:34 AM

Please don’t post AI generated comments :(

Just write it yourself. I promise it’s worth it

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dparktoday at 5:29 AM

I’ve thought of going down the TDD model for LLMs as a way of providing constraints on their behavior. I would think that “vertical slice” TDD would encourage the LLM to start tailoring the tests to the implementation rather than establishing the invariants up front, though. I was considering “horizontal” TDD to force the agent to implement constraints before coding to them.

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lukewritestoday at 5:37 AM

Curious, In the repo you mention

> Several rules come from 2025-2026 industry research on agentic coding failure modes

What are some of the papers you read?

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esperenttoday at 6:29 AM

> execute → tdd

How are these separate steps?

TDD is how you execute, not something you tack on afterwards.