Explore an objective

Use explore when you can describe the desired result but still need to settle its scope, behavior, or testing. It creates or revises the area’s brief.md. You can also say “shape” or “wayfind”.

Examples

Paste either request into your coding-agent chat:

Use zdev to explore area greeting: add --name to hello.py so that
python hello.py --name Ada prints Hello, Ada! Preserve the default greeting.
Keep the change small and agree on the necessary validation before making tasks.

Use zdev to shape area greeting from its existing brief. Add support
for names containing spaces and settle how an empty name should behave.

What happens

The agent reads the existing code and repository guidance, then asks about choices that affect the result. For this example, the behavior of an empty name may need a decision; the current default greeting can be read from the code.

The resulting .zdev/greeting/brief.md records the observable outcome, boundaries, settled decisions, open questions, testing level, and validation. Testing may mean existing checks or a focused manual check when that is enough. Creating a test framework is not a prerequisite for a small script change.

Exploration ends by checking and presenting the brief. You can then discuss an unresolved choice or create tasks. If you already know you want both steps, say “explore greeting, then create tasks”. Changes to project documentation outside .zdev need to be part of your request or a separately agreed edit.

See planning and task creation for the detailed workflow and setup for the first area in a repository.