Glossary

Gangsta Agents uses themed terminology throughout the framework. Here's what every term means in plain English — and why it maps to its software development concept.

A

Associate

Mafia: Someone who works with a crime family but isn't a full member. They're trusted helpers — contractors, not employees.

Gangsta Agents: External tools and API proxies. Not part of the agent hierarchy — they provide services that Agents and Crew Leads use. Examples: GitHub API, database clients, CI/CD systems.

B

Budget

General: A resource allocation — time, money, or tokens assigned to a task.

Gangsta Agents: The resource allocation assigned to an Agent's work package during Resource Development. Budgets are tracked during Execution — tasks that exceed their budget must flag it to the Don. This is Omerta's Rule of Budget: resource budgets are tracked, not ignored.

C

Checkpoint

Military/General: A control point where you verify status before proceeding.

Gangsta Agents: A state file written to disk at the end of each Heist phase. Checkpoints are what make Heist resumption possible — any session can read the checkpoint and pick up where the last one left off.

Consigliere

Mafia: The boss's trusted advisor. Not in the chain of command — operates outside it to give unbiased counsel. The word is Italian for "counselor."

Gangsta Agents: The strategic advisor — an impartial agent for architectural review, security auditing, and code assessment. Because they're outside the chain of command, they give honest assessments rather than pleasing the hierarchy. Invoked via gangsta:the-consigliere.

Constitution

Mafia: The family's internal rules — what's allowed, what's forbidden, how disputes are settled.

Gangsta Agents: Accumulated project-specific rules stored in The Ledger at docs/gangsta/constitution/. The Constitution grows over time as Heists add lessons learned. It extends Omerta with project-level constraints.

Contract

Legal/Business: A formal agreement that defines terms, scope, and obligations. Once signed, it's binding.

Gangsta Agents: The formal specification document produced during The Sit-Down. Signed by the Don, it defines scope, acceptance criteria, architectural decisions, and rules. No Agent writes code without one. If code contradicts the Contract, you revise the Contract — not the code (Omerta Law #5).

Cowboy Coding

Software slang: Writing code without discipline, structure, or process — flying solo and improvising.

Gangsta Agents: Undisciplined development without structure — writing code without specs, skipping phases, flying solo without hierarchy. Gangsta Agents exists to eliminate cowboy coding. The opposite of how the Gangsta Agents Family operates.

Crew Lead

Gangsta Agents: A domain crew lead that owns a territory (a specific area of the codebase) and orchestrates Agents within it. Invoked via gangsta:the-capo. Responsible for sequencing tasks within a territory, dispatching Agents, and enforcing quality standards. Reports to the Underboss.

D

Devil's Advocate

General: The role of someone who argues the opposite position to stress-test an idea — not their real opinion, but a structured challenge.

Gangsta Agents: One of two voices in The Grilling. The Devil's Advocate challenges every assumption made by the Proposer, surfaces risks, and forces edge-case thinking. Their job is not to win — it's to make the final approach stronger.

Don

Mafia: The boss. The head of the family. Supreme authority — no one outranks the Don.

Gangsta Agents: You. The user. The Don approves every phase gate, signs every Contract, and declares every Heist complete. The framework never auto-advances without your explicit approval. Your word overrides everything — including the skills.

Dossier

Intelligence: A file of collected intelligence about a target — surveillance notes, known patterns, findings.

Gangsta Agents: The output of Reconnaissance — a structured report of codebase intel including file structure, dependencies, test coverage, and relevant Ledger entries. The Don approves the Dossier before the Heist moves to The Grilling.

E

Execution

General: The act of implementing a plan.

Gangsta Agents: Phase 5 of the Heist Pipeline — the actual code implementation. Agents implement the Execution Plan in parallel, following Test-Driven Development per the Contract. Budgets are tracked. Skill: gangsta:the-hit.

Execution Plan

Project management: A detailed operational plan for a project — who does what, in what order, with what resources.

Gangsta Agents: The output of Resource Development. The Contract decomposed into specific tasks, with Agents assigned, territories claimed, and budget estimates set. The Don approves the Execution Plan before Execution begins. Stored at docs/gangsta/{heist-name}/plans/.

F

Fail

Gangsta Agents: A Ledger entry documenting a mistake — an approach that caused rework, confusion, or wasted effort. Fails are preserved so they're never repeated. Written to docs/gangsta/fails/.

G

The Grilling

General: Rigorous, pressure-filled questioning to surface the truth.

Gangsta Agents: Phase 2 of the Heist Pipeline. An adversarial debate where a Proposer argues for the best approach and a Devil's Advocate challenges every assumption. The pressure surfaces edge cases and risks that single-perspective design misses. Output: Grilling Conclusions. Skill: gangsta:the-grilling.

H

Heist

Mafia: A carefully planned operation. Multiple roles, coordinated phases, a clear objective.

Gangsta Agents: The complete 6-phase development cycle for any feature: Reconnaissance → The Grilling → The Sit-Down → Resource Development → Execution → The Delivery. The Don approves each phase gate. No shortcuts, no skipped phases.

I

Insight

Gangsta Agents: A Ledger entry preserving a successful pattern, non-obvious approach, or domain knowledge worth reusing. Written to docs/gangsta/insights/ during The Delivery or after significant discoveries.

L

The Delivery

Gangsta Agents: Phase 6 of the Heist Pipeline — verification and integration. The Consigliere reviews all deliverables against the Contract, integration tests run, The Ledger is updated with insights and fails, and the output is clean, production-ready code. Skill: gangsta:laundering.

The Ledger

Accounting: A record book tracking history and accumulated knowledge.

Gangsta Agents: Gangsta Agents' institutional memory — stored in docs/gangsta/. Contains Insights (successful patterns), Fails (documented mistakes), and the Constitution (accumulated rules). Unlike a session, The Ledger persists. Skill: gangsta:the-ledger.

O

Omerta

Mafia: The mafia's code of silence — the rule that you never act outside sanctioned channels. Violating Omerta is a serious breach.

Gangsta Agents: The five governance laws that prevent chaos in AI-assisted development: Introduction Rule, Rule of Availability, Rule of Truth, Rule of Budget, and Spec is Law. Always active. Non-negotiable. Skill: gangsta:omerta. See Omerta — The Five Laws.

P

Phase Gate

Process management: A mandatory control point in a pipeline where you verify readiness before proceeding.

Gangsta Agents: The mandatory checkpoint at the end of each Heist phase. The Don must explicitly approve before the next phase begins. There is no auto-advancing — ever. If the output isn't right, the phase is rejected and redone.

R

Reconnaissance

Military/Intelligence: Scouting before an operation — gathering intelligence about the target environment.

Gangsta Agents: Phase 1 of the Heist Pipeline. Associates survey the codebase, identify patterns, read documentation, and check The Ledger. The output is the Dossier. Skill: gangsta:reconnaissance.

Resource Development

Project management: Assembling the team, estimating effort, and planning execution before implementation.

Gangsta Agents: Phase 4 of the Heist Pipeline. The Contract is decomposed into parallel work packages, territories are assigned to Crew Leads, and budgets are estimated. The output is the Execution Plan. Skill: gangsta:resource-development.

S

Shadow Hotfix

Software: A code change made outside the official process — without authorization, review, or a spec.

Gangsta Agents: Code written outside the Heist Pipeline — without a spec, without a Contract, without Don approval. The equivalent of a rogue Agent acting on their own. Violates Omerta Law #5 (Spec is Law). The framework is designed to make this impossible.

The Sit-Down

Mafia: A formal meeting between senior members to settle disputes, make agreements, or plan operations.

Gangsta Agents: Phase 3 of the Heist Pipeline. The Contract is drafted — no code allowed. This phase is purely specification. If any code appears, the phase restarts. The Don signs the Contract before proceeding. Skill: gangsta:the-sit-down.

Spec is Law

Gangsta Agents: Omerta Law #5. The Contract (spec) is the authoritative source of truth. If code contradicts the spec, you revise the spec — not the code. Code is never the primary artifact. Implementation reveals a spec issue? Stop, propose a Contract revision, get Don approval, then resume.

T

Territory

Mafia/Military: A defined area of responsibility or jurisdiction.

Gangsta Agents: A domain of the codebase assigned to a Crew Lead during Resource Development. Territories prevent Agents from stepping on each other's work — each Crew Lead owns their domain and coordinates within it.

U

Underboss

Mafia: The second-in-command of a crime family. Handles day-to-day operations, manages the crew, and acts when the Don is unavailable.

Gangsta Agents: The Chief Operating Officer of the Gangsta Agents Family. Handles task decomposition, resource allocation, and planning. Dispatches work packages to Crew Leads and Agents. The operational layer between the Don's vision and the crew's execution. Skill: gangsta:the-underboss.

W

Worker

General: The person or process that executes assigned tasks — no architectural authority, just implementation.

Gangsta Agents: A stateless subagent that implements assigned tasks. Workers execute code per the Contract and Execution Plan, follow TDD (gangsta:drill-tdd), and report completion. They don't make architectural decisions — they execute. Dispatched by Crew Leads within territories.

The 1% Rule

Gangsta Agents-specific: If there's even a 1% chance a skill applies to what the agent is doing, it must be invoked. No rationalizing. No "this is probably simple enough to skip." The rule exists because agents are prone to convincing themselves that structure isn't needed — and that's exactly when it is.

See: The 1% Rule