starting-the-task

Starting a task involves understanding acceptance criteria, running baseline tests on main, creating a feature branch, updating your issue tracker to in_progress, opening a draft PR, and syncing with main before coding. This checklist ensures clarity, environment readiness, and observable progress from day one.

Before coding, confirm acceptance criteria and dependencies in your issue tracker, run tests on main to verify environment health, create a fresh feature branch, and update tracking status. Opening a draft PR early enables CI feedback and stakeholder visibility without blocking development.

Create a feature branch from main, then use git pull --rebase to sync before diverging into new work. This workflow prevents conflicts, keeps history clean, and ensures your branch stays aligned with shared code throughout development.

Draft PRs enable early CI runs, catch environment issues immediately, and signal ownership and progress to stakeholders. Starting with a draft PR makes blockers visible sooner and keeps the team synchronized without blocking your coding.

Run your baseline test suite on main to confirm the development environment is healthy and dependencies are in place. This step catches setup issues early, prevents wasted effort, and ensures your branch starts from a known good state.

Decide upfront which validation methods you'll use—unit, integration, or manual testing—and capture the plan in your issue tracker or draft PR. Planning tests early aligns expectations and prevents scope creep or missed coverage.