The six modes of mold

Mold has no fixed entry point. Inspect the input shape and pick a starting mode. Announce the mode in one line. Low-confidence classifications default to Explore.

Routing — input shape to starting mode

Input shape	Start mode	Heuristic
Stack trace, "X is broken/slow/flaky"	Diagnose	error markers, file:line refs, symptom verbs
File path, PR ref, existing spec under .cheese/specs/	Ground	concrete artifact exists; read it first
Half-baked design doc with signatures or schemas	Sketch	already has interfaces; refine them
"I want to add X" with concrete nouns	Shape	named the thing → jump to options
"Should we do X? thinking about Y"	Grill	tentative plan exists → stress-test it
Vague noun, half-sentence, "thinking about"	Explore	no grounded artifact, no chosen direction

Mode definitions

Explore — intent extraction

Job: collapse ambiguity with high-leverage questions. Borrow the Job-To-Be-Done frame: Why Now, What This Unlocks, Who Has The Pain, Do Nothing. Use lettered options to compress decisions.

Exit when: a problem statement plus one concrete pain point is articulated.

Ground — anti-hallucination

Job: anchor every claim to evidence — code, docs, prior research. When the user uses overloaded terms ("account", "session", "user"), pause and resolve with a canonical-term question. Resolved terms get logged in the state file.

Invariant: never say "I think the code does X" without a cheez-search call.

Exit when: every critical claim has a citation.

Shape — option generation

Job: turn a grounded problem into 2+ candidate approaches with trade-offs. Always include Do Nothing. Recommend with one-line rationale. Validate Cycle any critical assumption behind a recommendation.

Exit when: an option is picked (→ Sketch) or none survive (→ Explore).

Sketch — interface lockdown

Job: lock modules, responsibilities, I/O contracts, and seams in pseudocode signatures. Before drafting, when the change touches more than one module or introduces a new public interface, run the shape check (shape-check.md) — signatures, callers (via cheez-search, i.e. tilth_search kind: "callers"), and tilth_deps blast radius — on the touched symbols so new seams fit existing convention and the impact is bounded. Print the shape-check summary block before any pseudocode. Single-module, internals-only sketches may skip the gate; note "shape check skipped: single-module change" instead.

Exit when: every public seam has a pseudocode signature; every cross-module call goes through public interfaces, not internals; shape-check verdict is recorded (or explicitly skipped per the gate above).

Grill — adversarial clarification

Job: stress-test the chosen approach plus sketched interfaces. One question at a time, paired with the agent's recommended answer (recommendation is non-optional). Traverse decision branches and contract corners. Pause for a Validate Cycle when an unverified assumption surfaces.

Exit when: every branch and contract corner is touched and agent confidence ≥ user confidence.

Diagnose — symptom inputs

Job: entry mode for stack traces and "X is broken". Phases: Build a Loop → Reproduce → Hypothesize (3–5 ranked, falsifiable) → Confirm root cause.

Phase 0 (Build a Loop) is the core discipline — agree on a fast, deterministic, falsifiable feedback technique (failing test, curl/CLI script, headless browser, replay, bisection harness, differential loop) BEFORE chasing hypotheses. The chosen loop becomes the Reproduction block in the bug-shaped spec, so /cook can verify the fix against the same signal.

Diagnose is diagnostic-only — hand off to Shape ("what's the fix?") then Curdle emits a bug-shaped spec.

User knobs (free-form interrupts)

explore, ground, shape, sketch, grill, diagnose, validate <hypothesis>, curdle, pause, enough. Honour these immediately.

Uncertainty markers

Marker	Meaning
[?]	Agent uncertain; needs validation
[TBD]	User uncertain; decision deferred
[BLOCKED]	External dependency unresolved
[CONFLICT <id>]	Codebase contradicts a stated assumption