Reference Hunt

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

• 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.
• 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.
• Have the user confirm the semantics summary. This is the moment misreadings get caught cheaply.
• 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.
• 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.