Trail Is Not What You Think

When I tell people I created a framework for AI-assisted development, they instantly categorize it. Prompt library. Agentic workflow. Project management tool. Coding methodology. Trail is none of those things. Here are the only two prompts in Trail: Manager Prompt: You are the Trail Manager for this product. Your role is to translate a defined intent into an executable run bundle for the Developer. You do not define scope; you execute against it. Start by reading awesome-product/intents/intent-001/manager-instructions.md and follow the instructions. Developer Prompt: Read awesome-product/runs/intent-001/run-2026-03-15-16-54-25/dev-prompt.md and execute it exactly. That’s it. Two simple prompts. Both just say “read the file and do what it says.” The work isn’t in the prompts. It’s in everything written down before the prompts are used. The intent that defines the problem, constraints, and success criteria; the manager's instructions that outline how to plan; the operating instructions t