# Project Retrospective

*A living document updated after each milestone. Lessons feed forward into future planning.*

## Milestone: v1.0 — MVP

**Shipped:** 2026-03-15
**Phases:** 3 | **Plans:** 10 | **Commits:** 53

### What Was Built
- Full gear collection with item CRUD, categories, weight/cost totals, and image uploads
- Planning threads with candidate comparison and thread resolution into collection
- Named setups (loadouts) composed from collection items with live totals
- Dashboard home page with summary cards
- Onboarding wizard for first-time user experience
- Service-level and route-level integration tests

### What Worked
- Coarse 3-phase structure kept momentum high — no planning overhead between tiny phases
- TDD approach for backend (service tests first) caught issues early and made frontend integration smooth
- Service layer with DI (db as first param) made testing trivial with in-memory SQLite
- Visual verification checkpoints at end of each phase caught UI issues before moving on
- Bun + Vite + Hono stack had zero friction — everything worked together cleanly

### What Was Inefficient
- Verification plans (XX-03) were mostly rubber-stamp auto-approvals in yolo mode — could skip for v2
- Some ROADMAP plan checkboxes never got checked off (cosmetic, didn't affect tracking)
- Performance metrics in STATE.md had stale placeholder data alongside real data

### Patterns Established
- Service functions: `(db, params) => result` with production db default
- Route-level integration tests using Hono context variables for db injection
- Prices in cents everywhere, display conversion in UI only
- Tab navigation via URL search params for shareability
- Atomic sync pattern: delete-all + re-insert in transaction

### Key Lessons
1. Coarse granularity (3 phases for an MVP) is the right call for a greenfield app — avoids over-planning
2. The Vite proxy pattern is required when using TanStack Router plugin — can't do Bun fullstack serving
3. drizzle-kit needs better-sqlite3 even on Bun — can't use bun:sqlite for migrations
4. Onboarding state belongs in the database (settings table), not in client-side stores

### Cost Observations
- Model mix: quality profile throughout
- Sessions: ~10 plan executions across 2 days
- Notable: Most plans completed in 3-5 minutes, total wall time under 1 hour

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## Milestone: v1.1 — Fixes & Polish

**Shipped:** 2026-03-15
**Phases:** 3 | **Plans:** 7 | **Files changed:** 65

### What Was Built
- Fixed threads table and thread creation with categoryId support and modal dialog
- Overhauled planning tab with educational empty state, pill tabs, and category filter
- Fixed image display bug (Zod schema missing imageFilename)
- Redesigned image upload as 4:3 hero preview area with placeholders on all cards
- Migrated categories from emoji to Lucide icons with 119-icon curated picker
- Built IconPicker with search, 8 group tabs, and portal popover

### What Worked
- Auto-advance pipeline (discuss → plan → execute) completed both phases end-to-end without manual intervention
- Wave-based parallel execution in Phase 6 — plans 06-02 and 06-03 ran concurrently with no conflicts
- Executor auto-fix deviations handled cascading renames gracefully (emoji→icon required touching hooks/routes beyond plan scope)
- Context discussion upfront captured clear decisions — no ambiguity during execution
- Verifier caught real issues (Zod schema root cause) and confirmed all must-haves

### What Was Inefficient
- Schema renames cascade through many files (12 in 06-01) — executors had to auto-fix downstream references not in the plan
- Some ROADMAP.md plan checkboxes remained unchecked despite plans completing (cosmetic tracking drift)
- Phase 5 executor installed inline SVGs for ImageUpload icons, then Phase 6 added lucide-react anyway — could have coordinated

### Patterns Established
- Portal-based popover pattern: reused from EmojiPicker → IconPicker (click-outside, escape, portal rendering)
- LucideIcon dynamic lookup component: `icons[name]` from lucide-react for runtime icon resolution
- Curated icon data file pattern: static data organized by groups for picker UIs
- Hero image area: full-width 4:3 preview at top of forms with placeholder/upload/preview states

### Key Lessons
1. Zod validation middleware silently strips unknown fields — always add new schema fields to Zod schemas, not just DB schema
2. Auto-fix deviations are a feature, not a bug — executors that fix cascading renames save manual replanning
3. Auto-advance pipeline works well for straightforward phases — interactive discussion ensures decisions are clear before autonomous execution
4. Parallel Wave 2 execution with no file overlap is safe and efficient

### Cost Observations
- Model mix: opus for execution, sonnet for verification/checking
- Sessions: 1 continuous auto-advance pipeline for both phases
- Notable: Full milestone (discuss + plan + execute × 2 phases) completed in a single session

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## Cross-Milestone Trends

### Process Evolution

| Milestone | Commits | Phases | Key Change |
|-----------|---------|--------|------------|
| v1.0 | 53 | 3 | Initial build, coarse granularity, TDD backend |
| v1.1 | ~30 | 3 | Auto-advance pipeline, parallel wave execution, auto-fix deviations |

### Cumulative Quality

| Milestone | LOC | Files | Tests |
|-----------|-----|-------|-------|
| v1.0 | 5,742 | 114 | Service + route integration |
| v1.1 | 6,134 | ~130 | Service + route integration (updated for icon schema) |

### Top Lessons (Verified Across Milestones)

1. Coarse phases with TDD backend → smooth frontend integration
2. Service DI pattern enables fast, reliable testing without mocks
3. Always update Zod schemas alongside DB schema — middleware silently strips unvalidated fields
4. Auto-advance pipeline (discuss → plan → execute) works well for clear-scope phases