Term set

Glossary

Short definitions for the terms Raft uses when teaching non-engineers to ship with AI.

A

Agent direction Agent direction is the practice of giving AI coding agents context, boundaries, verification steps, and small next moves instead of asking for broad code generation.

C

CLAUDE.md A CLAUDE.md file is a project instruction file that tells Claude Code how the codebase works, what rules to preserve, and how to verify changes.

S

Standing brief A standing brief is the permanent product document that sits at the root of an AI-assisted project. It tells the model what the product is, what it must never do, what specific words mean, and how to verify any change.
Standing check A standing check is a short self-audit list a coding agent runs through before claiming a change is done. It pairs with the standing brief: the brief tells the model what's true, the check tells the model what to verify before reporting back.

V

Verification ladder The verification ladder is a five-rung procedure non-engineers run after any AI-assisted change. It takes about three minutes, requires no coding knowledge, and catches the silent-regression class of failures that the agent's own 'done' signal will miss.