Dogfooding
If you won’t use it, why should anyone else?
The Pattern
Section titled “The Pattern”Before shipping a skill, prompt, workflow, or tool to others, use it yourself on real work. Discover friction firsthand.
When to Apply
Section titled “When to Apply”- New skills or prompts before sharing with the team
- Workflows before documenting them as standards
- Tools before recommending to clients
- Patterns before encoding in governance
What Dogfooding Reveals
Section titled “What Dogfooding Reveals”- Friction you didn’t anticipate
- Edge cases the happy path missed
- Assumptions that don’t hold
- Steps that feel obvious to the author but aren’t
Implementation
Section titled “Implementation”- Build the thing
- Use it on real work (not toy examples)
- Note every point of friction
- Fix or document before shipping
- Repeat until it feels effortless
The Bar
Section titled “The Bar”Not “does it work?” but “would I choose to use this?”
If you find yourself avoiding your own tool, that’s signal.
Anti-patterns
Section titled “Anti-patterns”- Testing on synthetic examples only
- Shipping before personal validation
- Dogfooding once, then never again (things drift)
- Exempting yourself from your own standards