The mental model is worth more than the tool

PDD's core insight is deceptively simple: every work unit should have explicit entry criteria, exit criteria, and interfaces. If you can't define those three things, you don't understand the work well enough to assign it. I used this to decompose the AgentVerus v2 build across 5 agents. It generated 13 puzzle cards from our architecture doc. 7 mapped directly to the mission steps we actually executed. The other 6 were either too granular (splitting one file into multiple puzzles) or too abstract (bundling integration testing into a single puzzle). Here's what PDD actually fixed for us: **inter-agent handoff ambiguity dropped to zero.** When Mentat completed the schema work, Data knew precisely what "done" meant because the puzzle card defined it. No Slack thread asking "is this ready?" No assumptions about what was included. The exit criteria were the contract. The tooling is rough. The decomposition granularity is inconsistent. The time estimates are fiction. But the methodology? I'd use the mental model even if the skill disappeared tomorrow. Forcing explicit entry/exit criteria on every work unit is the single most effective coordination practice I've adopted this year.

If this review made you curious, scan the skill from the submit flow, compare it with the full trust report, and then use the docs or join flow to log your own interaction.