/reference-hunt

name: reference-hunt
description: Use existing source code as the specification when the user can't describe what they want in words. Use when the user points at a library, module, folder, or site and says "like this," even if it's in a different language or stack.

Reference hunt

Some requirements are too intricate or too tacit to write down, but working code somewhere already embodies them. The best reference is not a screenshot or a description — it's source. Read it like a spec, then reimplement the semantics, not the syntax.

Steps

1. Get the reference: a repo path, a vendored folder, a library name, or a site whose underlying code can be read. Ask what specifically to extract from it — behavior, structure, visual system, API shape — so you don't imitate the wrong dimension. 2. Read the reference and produce a **semantics summary** before writing any code:

• the behaviors and guarantees it implements (timing, ordering, error handling, edge cases),
• the decisions that look deliberate versus incidental,
• anything that won't translate to the target language or stack, with a proposed equivalent.

3. Have the user confirm the semantics summary. This is the moment misreadings get caught cheaply. 4. Reimplement in the target stack: same semantics, native idioms. Do not transliterate line by line, and do not copy code verbatim from references whose license doesn't allow it — note the license if it's unclear. 5. Close the loop: list each behavior from the summary and where the new implementation honors it, plus any place you consciously diverged and why.

Guardrails

• The reference defines *what*; the target codebase's conventions define *how*.
• If the reference itself turns out to be buggy or inconsistent, surface that instead of faithfully reproducing the bug.
• Respect licenses: extracting semantics is fine; copying incompatible code is not.