Incremental coding

Skill DevelopersGlobal/ai-agent-skills/skills/incremental-coding

AI agent skills for production grade applications

Install

npx -y skills add DevelopersGlobal/ai-agent-skills --skill incremental-coding

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Build in verifiable increments. Never implement more than can be tested right now. Ship partial working systems over complete broken ones.

SKILL.md

2.3 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Overview

The biggest risk in software development is building a lot of code that doesn't work. Incremental coding limits this risk: build a little, verify it works, build more. At every step, the system is in a known-good state.

When to Use

Any implementation that will take more than 2 hours
When building in a complex domain you're uncertain about
When multiple components need to integrate

Process

Step 1: Define the First Increment

What is the smallest possible thing you can build that provides value and can be verified?
It doesn't have to be feature-complete — just correct and verifiable.
Example: "Add the endpoint skeleton with hardcoded response" before adding business logic.

Verify: The first increment can be verified in under 5 minutes.

Step 2: Build → Verify → Commit

Build only the first increment.
Run tests. Verify manually if needed. Confirm it works.
Commit this working state.
Repeat for the next increment.

Verify: There is a working commit after each increment.

Step 3: Integration Continuously

Integrate with the real system as early as possible — not at the end.
Test against real dependencies (DB, API, etc.) as early as possible.
Fake integrations (mocks) should be replaced with real ones by the end.

Verify: By completion, all mocks replaced with real integration.

Common Rationalizations (and Rebuttals)

Excuse	Rebuttal
"I need to build it all to know if it works"	No. Build the first piece and test it. Uncertainty is always reducible.
"Integration is at the end"	Integration pain is proportional to time since last integration. Integrate continuously.

Verification

Implementation built in verifiable increments
Working commit exists after each increment
No long stretches of "broken" state in git history
All mocks replaced with real integrations by completion