SOUL.md

Started using this today and even writing it feels the best thing that I do with GenAI. I think it relates to the “taste” argument. SOUL.md feels like the first step towards a greater symbiosis. It feels like writing the last line of defense against the unknown and taking the first step towards hope and meaning. SOULS are different, a mouse, cat and dog have different SOULS which serve them differently and quite honestly. All are needed for a balanced ecosystem.

But can there be GHOSTS (BAD SOULS) as well? For sure! We love in a universe where entropy works in a way that creating things will always be more difficult than destroying something.

So how do you create a SOUL doc ? I like to start with a higher level goal something for which this project/ task is a subgoal. If I was managing this project where would the outcome fit in ? What is the best case scenario from this ? That’s the guiding function - which might sometimes mean contradictory results are welcome.

Secondly it helps to assign a personality, which I think forces to constraint scope (eg a system architect might spend less time thinking about the UI/UX). You can also assign personality focal points (eg an AWS systems architect specializing in dev ops).

Finally a ledger, can’t stress this enough. Words are the building block to the whole agentic development ecosystem. Documenting architectural choices, implementation, evals, results all require extensive logging and documenting. You can never have more docs. Ask it to maintain a ledger!

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Cliche 2000s image where an astronaut is drooling over a single flower over a barren land.