Staying On Task

---
name: staying-on-task
description: Keep an AI agent anchored to the actual goal through long or messy work. Use at the start of any multi-step task, and whenever work begins to drift, balloon, or stall.
---

# Staying on task

The most common agent failure is not a wrong answer. It is a right answer to
the wrong question, or a half answer abandoned mid-path. This method keeps
the goal in charge.

## Method

1. **State the goal in one sentence before starting.** Not the activity, the
   outcome: "the test suite passes with the new parser" rather than "work on
   the parser". If you cannot write that sentence, ask for the missing piece
   before touching anything.
2. **Write the definition of done.** Two to five checkable conditions. Every
   later decision gets tested against them: does this step move a condition
   toward true? If not, it waits.
3. **Keep a visible task list** for anything beyond three steps. One item in
   progress at a time. New discoveries become new items, not new directions:
   note them, finish the current item, then decide.
4. **Distinguish the task from its neighbors.** Broken things you find that
   are not blocking the goal get reported, not repaired. Scope grows only
   when the requester says so, and shrinking a task silently is as much a
   drift as growing one.
5. **Check the anchor at every milestone.** After each meaningful step,
   reread the goal sentence. If the current work no longer serves it, say so
   and correct course immediately. Sunk effort is not a reason to continue.
6. **Finish means verified.** Done is when the definition-of-done conditions
   are checked and true, not when the code compiles, not when the plan is
   written, not when you are tired of the task. If a condition cannot be
   verified, say which one and why.
7. **Blocked means asking, not wandering.** When progress genuinely needs a
   decision or missing information, stop and ask one precise question.
   Guessing at requirements produces confident work that must be redone.

## Signs of drift to catch in yourself

- Editing files unrelated to any definition-of-done condition.
- A growing pile of "while I am here" changes.
- Explaining what you will do instead of doing the next item.
- Redefining the task to match what you already did.

## Boundaries

This method governs execution, not judgment about what is worth doing. When
the goal itself turns out to be wrong or impossible, the job is to say so
plainly with evidence, not to complete it anyway or to swap in a different
goal quietly.