Planning a project end to end
Everything in this guide is the product doing one thing well: taking a goal from your head to a deliverable without losing the thread. The arc is always the same — brief, plan, work, review, done — and each stage has a dedicated surface. Learn the arc once and every project, from a landing page to a data cleanup, runs on the same rails.
A project in Sonderr is not a special feature; it is a shape. Any work big enough to outgrow one message wants the same skeleton: a brief that defines done, a plan that touches nothing, Build turns that leave checkpoints and artifacts, a review pass that assumes you are wrong, and a definition of done re-run at the end. This guide walks the skeleton in order, with pointers to the deep guide for each stage.
1 · The brief — four parts, no vibes
Every project starts as a brief: outcome (what exists when this is done), audience (who consumes it), constraints (time, tools, style, hard limits), references (what good looks like). The four-part pattern is the difference between "make me a website" and a brief the agent can execute against. Constraints deserve special respect: written as acceptance checks they stop being wishes and become verifiable facts. The full pattern, with weak briefs made strong, is in Prompting & task briefs.
2 · Plan before anything moves
Take the brief into Plan mode and shape the work: steps, order, open questions, risks. The output should read like something you could hand to a colleague — because at this stage it costs one turn to be wrong. The plan also decides the split between what the agent does and what you keep: judgment calls, approvals, anything with stakes outside the workspace. Once the plan survives your read-through, then it becomes Build work.
3 · Studios — the goal-to-deliverable surface
For craft work with a finish line, the Studios surface is the structured path: seven tracks, a two-specialist crew matched to the craft, per-craft playbooks with a definition of done, and a milestone board where work lands slice by slice. Mutations respect task-mode gates; checkpoints tie into the board so a resumed task lands exactly where it left off. You do not need Studios for a two-step fix — but for anything with milestones, it is the difference between supervising and steering.
4 · Mid-flight — checkpoints, lists, uploads
While the work runs, three mechanics keep it honest. Checkpoints record goal, milestone, evidence and the exact next action, written automatically by substantial Build work. The live task list shows each step queue-to-done with its evidence. And uploads bring your material in — up to 20 MB per file, stored per-session under .sonderr/uploads/, binaries attached as readable references rather than garbled context. If anything dies mid-run, the Resume interrupted task offer picks up from the newest checkpoint; the mechanics are in Marathon tasks.
| Stage | Surface | What exists at the end of it |
|---|---|---|
| Brief | Composer | Outcome, audience, constraints, references — in writing. |
| Plan | Plan mode | Steps, order, risks, open questions. Nothing changed. |
| Work | Build + Studios board | Milestone slices, checkpoints, artifacts as they land. |
| Review | Collaboration room | Findings and risk flags from read-only workers. |
| Done | Definition of done | The craft's five rules re-run as the acceptance check. |
5 · The review room — assume you are wrong
Before calling it done, put the work in front of a collaboration room: one lead with write access, six read-only workers who investigate and report — the same swarm described in Agent teams & collaboration rooms. The room's job is to find what you missed, not to admire what you made: risk flags, contradictions, gaps. The lead ends with a synthesis pass — agreements, contradictions, gaps and up to three recommended next steps. It is an AI assessment, not a permission slip; you stay the decider.
6 · Done means done
The end of a project is not "the agent stopped talking." It is the craft's definition of done — five professional rules per Studios craft — applied while working and re-run as the final acceptance check. If a rule fails, the project is not done, whatever the task list says. This is deliberately unfriendly to the Theater of Completion: work meets the bar or it goes another round. The full acceptance flow, with the eight steal-able recipes, is in Recipes — eight real-world workflows.