Workflow
Scope creep is the default mode of AI agents
Ask an AI agent for notifications and you get a notification system: preferences, channels, a digest scheduler, an unsubscribe flow. You wanted users to stop missing replies. Those are different requests, and the agent picked the bigger one for you.
Why agents over-build
Models are trained on finished software, so their picture of any feature is the mature version of it. When you say "notifications", the agent completes the pattern: real products have notification systems, so it builds one. It is not being careless. It is being thorough about the wrong thing.
People do this too, which is why product discovery exists as a discipline. The difference is speed: a person over-scopes in a planning meeting and someone catches it. An agent over-scopes at two hundred lines a minute, and by the time you notice, the sprawling version is already half-built and you feel invested in it.
The question that deflates the project
The cheapest fix happens before any code: someone has to ask what problem this actually solves. In Nanostack that is what/think does, and it does it one question at a time:
you users keep missing replies. I need notifications.
agent One question first: how do they cope today?
you they open the app 3-4 times a day to check.
agent Then a red dot beats a notification system.
It ships today; measure, then decide.Two questions, and the project became an afternoon. The agent did not get smarter. It got a step whose only job is to find the narrowest version of the idea worth shipping, and to challenge the premise before committing to it.
The decision has to survive the conversation
A scope decision made in chat dies in chat. The agent that agreed to the red dot at 2pm will happily start the digest scheduler at 4pm, because the agreement got compacted out of its context.
So /think ends by saving a brief: the problem, the target user, the narrowest wedge, the key risk, and what was explicitly cut. The planning phase reads that file, not the conversation. When the diff later grows beyond the wedge, the review phase flags it as scope drift, against a record neither of you has to remember.
Small is a strategy, not a compromise
The red dot is not the timid version of notifications. It is the fastest experiment that teaches you whether anyone cares. If the dot moves the metric, you have earned the right to build more. If it does not, you just saved three weeks. Working well with an agent mostly means letting it build the small thing fast instead of the big thing first.