ACI-004: When Coding Succeeds But the Project Fails

Thesis

A project can succeed technically -- high commit velocity, completed steel threads, working features -- and still fail entirely. Agentic coding amplifies output, but output is not validation. The faster you can build, the more disciplined you must be about building the right thing.

Story

MeetZaya was a 12-month development effort. By the numbers, it looked like a success: 1536 commits, 65 steel threads (52 completed), 17 CLAUDE.md edits tracking an evolving architecture. The codebase was functional. Features shipped. The agent collaboration was productive by every metric we had.