fitme·story
vpre-v5.0 · 3 min read
Summary card · 60-second read

Backlog Roundup — Two Pre-Rule Features That Stay Roundup-Only

Version
vpre-v5.0
Date
2026-04-20
Tier
light

Roundup of two features that pre-date the 2026-04-13 "every feature gets a case study" rule and have source material too thin to support a dedicated case study. Honest accounting: state.json + commits exist; PRD/research/tasks do not. Writing dedicated case studies for these would require either fabrication or file-tour redundancy with the PR diff. Three sibling features (gdpr-compliance, google-analytics, android-design-system) split out into their own case studies on 2026-05-05 because their source material is dense.

Honest disclosures
  • These two features genuinely lack rich source material. The honest record is "shipped pre-rule, captured retroactively via state.json + PR." A dedicated case study would have to either fabricate PM decisions that weren't made, or be a file-tour redundant with the PR diff.
  • development-dashboard is the only feature in the project that's a standalone Astro/React web app, not iOS code. Its rich material is post-merge stabilization (~10 follow-up commits made it useful) — but each individual fix is small, and "many small fixes stabilized the dashboard" is thin narrative.
  • ai-cohort-intelligence (federated learning engine) has 1 transition (init → complete on 2026-04-06) and a backfill note. PR #12 + state.json + the file diff is the only historical artifact.
  • This roundup MDX is the housekeeping replacement for the original 6-feature roundup. The 3 dense siblings now have dedicated showcases at slot 24a/24b/24c. The 6th feature in the original roundup (stats-v2) had its own dedicated case study before this split.
  • Originally drafted 2026-04-20. Narrowed and republished 2026-05-05 as part of the chain-of-custody initiative (full-repair-mode plan, Decision 3 + Q1 = Option 3 hybrid split).
How to read this case studyT1/T2/T3 · ledger · kill criterion
T1Instrumented
Numbers come from a machine-generated ledger or commit. Reproducible. Highest reader trust.
T2Declared
Numbers stated by a structured declaration (PRD, plan, frontmatter) but not directly measured.
T3Narrative
Estimates and observations from session memory. Useful for context; not citable as evidence.
Ledger
Where to verify the claim — a file path, GitHub issue, or backlog entry. Anything labelled ledger: is the audit trail.
Kill criterion
The pre-registered threshold under which this work would have been killed mid-flight. Not fired = work shipped without hitting the threshold.
Deferred
Items intentionally not closed in this version. Each cites the ledger that tracks remaining work.

Visual aid · key numbers at a glance

Default · no specialised visual declared
Features in this housekeeping roundupT1
2 (development-dashboard, ai-cohort-intelligence)
Sibling features split out (dense source material)T1
3 (gdpr-compliance, google-analytics, android-design-system)
Source artifacts per featureT1
state.json only (no PRD, no research, no tasks, no ux-spec)
Both features carry case_study_typeT1
pre_pm_workflow_backfill (existing exempt type)
Kill criterion · not fired
  • Not applicable — these are roundup entries for shipped pre-rule features. They cannot be killed; they're historical record.

Why this roundup exists

The project rule from 2026-04-13 says every feature gets a case study. Some features pre-date that rule and have source material too thin to honestly support a dedicated case study.

The 2026-04-20 six-features-roundup acknowledged this with an explicit stratification: 3 dense + 3 thin. The 3 dense ones were kept in the roundup at the time because consolidation was cleaner than mixing formats with the dedicated case studies the project was writing for post-rule features.

On 2026-05-05, the chain-of-custody initiative re-evaluated. The 3 dense ones (gdpr-compliance, google-analytics, android-design-system) were split into dedicated case studies because their source material justified it. The 2 thin ones (this roundup) stay roundup-only.

The two features

development-dashboard

One-line headline: The only feature in the project that's a standalone Astro/React web app rather than iOS code, with a full 10-transition PM lifecycle recorded and a long tail of follow-up fixes.

FieldValue
Scopedashboard/ — Astro + React + Tailwind v4 web app deployed on Vercel
Merge7f69d07 (--no-ff) + ~10 post-merge fixes
Wall time~6 hours initial, ~weeks of stabilization
Tests9/9 reconcile tests pass
Why thinWeb app off the iOS platform; rich material is post-merge fixes which are individually small

ai-cohort-intelligence

One-line headline: A federated learning engine that shipped before the PM workflow existed, captured retroactively with a single state transition.

FieldValue
ScopeAI engine (Python FastAPI) + iOS AI orchestration layer
PR#12 (32f27bf)
Files~30+ new files (ai-engine/app/ tree + FitTracker/AI/)
Transitions1 (init → complete on 2026-04-06)
Why thinNo research.md, no tasks.md, no UX spec, no phase-by-phase log. State.json explicitly marks Research/Tasks/UX/Testing/Review as pre-pm-workflow.

Cross-feature lesson

Pre-rule features should be backfilled honestly, not narratively. Some features just have a state.json and a PR. That's the correct record. Writing a dedicated case study for them would require either inventing PM decisions that weren't made (fabrication) or producing a file-tour that's redundant with the PR diff. The roundup format handles this cleanly: acknowledge the feature exists, name what shipped from the PR stats, link the backfilled state.json, and stop. The case_study_type: pre_pm_workflow_backfill tag in state.json is the schema record of this exemption.

Links