Common Workflows

Most work with Syntic Code falls into a handful of recurring shapes. Knowing how to frame each one helps Amara start in the right place and finish with something you can trust. This guide walks through the everyday tasks — fixing bugs, adding features, refactoring, and writing tests — and shows how to steer each toward a clean result.

Fixing a bug

Start by describing the symptom, not your guess at the cause. Tell Amara what you observed, how to reproduce it, and any error output you have. Amara will locate the relevant code, form a hypothesis, and propose a fix. Ask it to reproduce the failure first if a test exists, so you can confirm the change actually resolves it. Finish by running the test suite before you accept the diff.

Adding a feature

Give Amara the goal and the constraints together: what the feature should do, where it should live, and which existing patterns to follow. For anything non-trivial, run plan mode first so you can review the approach before files change. Point Amara at a similar existing feature as a template — matching your codebase’s conventions matters more than clever design, and a concrete example communicates them faster than prose.

Refactoring

Refactoring is safest when behavior is pinned down. Ask Amara to confirm there are tests covering the code, or to add them, before it restructures anything. Keep each refactor focused on one transformation — renaming, extracting, or moving — rather than several at once, so the diff stays reviewable and easy to revert if needed.

Writing tests

Ask for tests by describing the behavior you want covered and the edge cases you care about. Tell Amara which framework and file layout you use, or record it in SYNTIC.md so you never have to repeat it. Have Amara run the new tests and show you they pass, and watch for tests that merely mirror the implementation instead of checking real behavior.