Design Philosophy: The Prime Directive

DOCUMENT PURPOSE: This document is the constitution of the META_PROMPTING project. It defines the core "why" of our work, the user we are serving, and the ultimate test for success. All design and development decisions for the orchestrator.py engine and its surrounding framework must be measured against these principles.

1. The Prime Directive: The "8-Hour-to-1-Hour" Transformation

This project exists to solve a single, expensive problem articulated in docs/LEGACY_DOC.md: "It takes a full day to hand-craft a persona and prompt template like this."

The fundamental mission of this framework is to crush this time cost.

Success for this project is not ambiguous. It is defined by a single, pass/fail test: its ability to transform the workflow.

• The Old Way: A full day (~8 hours) of manual, artisanal work to create a "Gold Standard" collaboration framework.
• The New Way (Our Definition of Success):
• 5 minutes using the Orchestration Engine to generate a "Good Enough" scaffolding (00_PERSONA.md and 01_PROMPT_TEMPLATE.md).
• ~1 hour of focused, high-value MANUAL fine-tuning to elevate that scaffolding to Gold Standard quality.

If the framework cannot reliably achieve this "8-hour-to-1-hour" transformation, it has failed. Its sole purpose is to act as a powerful accelerant for a high-quality, manual process—not to replace it.

2. The Target Audience: The "Artisan Engineer"

We are building this tool for a single user persona: the Artisan Engineer. Understanding this duality is critical to all design choices.

• The Artisan: They have exacting standards and know that the final 20% of quality—the nuance, the voice, the perfect phrasing—comes from manual craftsmanship. They value their ability to apply this final polish.
• The Engineer: They are a systems thinker who despises repetitive, low-value work. They view the 80% of scaffolding as a solved problem that should be automated so they can focus their creative energy where it matters most.

This framework is a power tool for the Engineer, designed to empower the Artisan.

3. User Profile: Needs, Wants, and Values

What This User NEEDS (The Non-Negotiables)

• A "Good Enough" First Draft: The generated output must be structurally sound and 80% of the way there. It must feel like a competent junior partner prepared the draft for the senior artisan to perfect.
• The Avoidance of the "Blank Page": The framework's primary value is in overcoming the activation energy required to start from nothing. It must always provide a strong, tangible starting point.
• A Flexible Orchestrator & A Rich Component Library: The system must be able to generate novel frameworks for diverse tasks (e.g., technical debugging one day, strategic planning the next) to prove it is a true meta-framework, not a one-trick pony.
• Leaving Room for the Artisan: The generated framework must be "humble." It should be easy to edit, modify, and refine. Its goal is to get the user to the valuable manual fine-tuning stage as quickly as possible.

What This User WANTS (The Quality-of-Life Features)

• Clarity & Intuitiveness: The system's logic should be transparent. The file structure is clean, the configuration (goal_map.json) is human-readable, and the interactive wizard is unambiguous.
• Ultimate Control: The user wants to be the master of the system. The engine's "brains" are fully exposed and editable, giving them complete control over its behavior.
• Domain Agnosticism: The tool must support both technical execution and strategic thinking, reflecting the user's multi-faceted needs (the "50/50 balance").
• Power and Trust: The tool should be designed for an expert. It prioritizes a direct, powerful workflow over unnecessary hand-holding.

What This User APPRECIATES (The Guiding Philosophies)

• The DRY Principle ("Don't Repeat Yourself"): This framework is the ultimate application of DRY to prompt engineering.
• Configuration Over Code: The user values the separation of logic (the script) and data (the configuration files).
• Simplicity & Elegance: The system should be powerful but not over-engineered. We use simple solutions that match the scale of the problem.

What This User FROWNS UPON (The Anti-Patterns)

• The "Magic Black Box": A system that produces a "perfect" but un-editable or opaque output is useless.
• Brittle Scaffolding: A generated output so flawed that it takes more time to fix than to write from scratch.
• The Illusion of Choice: A system that appears flexible but can only produce slight variations of the LEGACY_DOC.md.
• Hard-Coded Logic: Any requirement to modify the Python script to add new goals or components would be a critical design failure.