The Way

The Way: five rules

The five rules every Developer Dojo member follows, in plain words.

The Way is how we work at Developer Dojo. It is short on purpose. There are five rules. You can learn them in ten minutes. You will use them for the rest of your career.

Why we have rules

A developer used to type most of the code. Today AI agents type much of it. The agents are fast. They are not wise. They do not know your customer. They do not know what you should not build.

So the human job changes. You decide what to build and why. The agents help you build it. The five rules keep that split clear.

The five rules

  1. People write epics and roadmaps. AI never does. An epic is a big goal for a whole product. You write it in your own words. Read the rule.
  2. Git is the source of truth. If it is not in git, it is not decided, not planned and not done. Read the rule.
  3. Open source first. Look for a tool that already exists before you build one. Check the licence before you use it. Read the rule.
  4. Fix forward. When something breaks, make a new change that fixes it. Do not undo old work to hide the problem. Read the rule.
  5. Disclose AI use. Say when and how you used AI. Hiding it is a bigger problem than using it. Read the rule.

How the rules fit together

  • Rule 1 says who decides.
  • Rule 2 says where the decision lives.
  • Rule 3 says how we choose tools.
  • Rule 4 says what we do when we are wrong.
  • Rule 5 says how we stay honest.

A small example

Maya is building TrailMug, a reusable-cup subscription for coffee drinkers. She talks to ten customers. She writes the epic “Customers can join, get a cup and return it at any partner café” herself (rule 1). She saves it in her project in git (rule 2). She finds an open source tool for scheduling instead of building one (rule 3). A release breaks the sign-up page, so she ships a fix the same day instead of rolling back (rule 4). In her weekly note she writes that an AI helped her fix grammar and break one milestone into tasks (rule 5).

Key points

  • Five rules: people write epics, git is the truth, open source first, fix forward, disclose AI.
  • The human decides. The agents build.
  • The rules protect you and your customers.

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