Governance Isn’t Flavor Text—and Lifecycle Isn’t One Size
Defaults for commits, secrets, and approvals aren’t about the brand of your editor—they’re about not treating AI pair programming as a free pass to production. Different project stages need different strictness.
Governance Isn’t Flavor Text—and Lifecycle Isn’t One Size
Policy isn’t decoration. Clear defaults—how commits are named, what never gets pushed without review, how secrets are handled, where humans must approve—aren’t about which tool you use. They’re about not turning pair programming into unreviewed surgery on systems that real users and data depend on.
You can tighten or loosen policy; ignoring it is the failure mode.
Lifecycle matters too. A weekend prototype, a revenue product, a mature codebase, and a legacy stack should not all run under identical rules. Same rigor everywhere either strangles exploration or under-protects what’s fragile.
“Project mode” (or equivalent) is the admission that strictness is a dial—tied to risk, maturity, and team—not a single universal setting.
The insight: governance and mode are engineering choices, not compliance theater.