Dogfooding and Engineering Lessons
Current validation contract · 2026-09-13
Architecture is not promoted because it looks good in a diagram. FlossWare uses executable dogfooding as evidence.
Loom dogfood
The canonical path is:
loom-ai/scripts/dogfood.sh
The current core gate validates the executable path through:
- formatting
- linting
- tests
- package build
- Intent construction
- Worker execution
- Arbiter coordination
- completion evaluation
- successful end-to-end core execution
The core smoke path deliberately does not require provider credentials, databases, Redis, OrientDB, containers, or a local model.
Engineering lesson
Prefer a real executable path over another architecture document.
A proposed abstraction earns durable architectural status when implementation and dogfood evidence demonstrate that the boundary is useful, stable, and composable.
What dogfooding protects against
- architecture documents describing systems that no longer exist
- abstractions created only because another product has the same word
- hidden coupling between capabilities
- infrastructure requirements leaking into the core execution gate
- optimization preceding hard feasibility constraints
Current principle
Build the smallest useful boundary, exercise it through the real path, then document what the evidence teaches us.