Analyze first when the product stage is unknown.
The playbook places Analyze before the tracker. It examines three separate axes—design-system stage, app maturity, and Engineering Foundation stage—and recommends each separately. Analyze is not a seventh stage and it does not advance the product by itself.
Layer 1 intake is already confirmed for the product. A shipped prototype is not a substitute for Q1–Q6 and platform strategy.
Six stages. One design-system clock.
Checking off a stage does not automatically make more of the Coverage map complete. The stage tracker and the coverage map are different clocks until Wire completes.
Coverage stays honest between stages.
Catalog fills the map. Names may change vocabulary without changing unresolved implementation. Cleanup is when leftover values actually leave the files. Rules is when unwritten behavior gets documented. Wire closes remaining split/design gaps. Do not change labels just to make the map feel like the stage moved.
After Wire, leave this tracker.
Engineering Foundation is a separate sibling process with its own six stages. It is not “Stage 7,” not a second half of Wire, and not the Gap Protocol.
Open Engineering Foundation →