Your first project with Lea

A first project usually goes in four steps: the brief, a milestone, the breakdown, and your go-ahead. Then the first reviews come in. This page follows Dictly, an example dictation app, through them. It assumes you have finished the Quick start.

Starting from a repo with history?

If the repo already has releases, a changelog or decision records, run the import from your own Claude Code session first. It drafts the brief, past milestones and open questions for you to approve. See Import a repo’s state.

1. The brief first

Start by telling Lea where the project is going, in your own words. She asks what she needs and writes the brief in five sections: Vision, For whom, Principles, Not doing, and How to build and test.

You: Dictly is the fastest way to dictate on iPhone and Mac. Audio stays on the device. No Android this year.

Lea: I’ve drafted the brief from that. Two questions: who are the first users you have in mind, and what are the commands to build and test the iOS app?

Proposed · P-1

The brief is yours, so Lea’s edits to it always come to you as a card with a diff (Needs you › Decide). Your own edits in Project settings › General apply at once (you created the project, so you manage it). Keep the “How to build and test” section real: workers read it, and checks such as xcodebuild test come from it.

2. One milestone

A milestone is a shipment with a due date: “2.4 First minute, due November 15”. Tell Lea what it is for and what is in and out of scope.

You: 2.4 is about the first minute. New users should get to their first dictation in under a minute. No account step. Due November 15.

Lea: I’ve added milestone 2.4 First minute in Next, with a spec. I recorded “no account step in 2.4” as a decision on it.

Saved · DIC-130 · decision on DIC-130

The milestone’s description is its spec, in three parts: Why (the problem, and the goal it serves), What (the requirements as a plain list) and Not in this release (scope cuts).

3. The breakdown

While the milestone sits in Next, Lea breaks it down into items: features, tasks, bugs, research, and questions for things nobody has decided yet. Each item gets checks for done (“Done when”). Nothing under a milestone in Next starts, so you can read the breakdown on Plan › List or the Canvas, change it, or ask for changes in chat.

4. The go-ahead

Move the milestone to Now: on the Plan’s Later · Next · Now control, on the Overview, or by saying “go” in chat. Moving it to Now is your approval of the spec. Workers then start on the items that are ready, in the order the blocks links allow.

5. Your first review

When an item needs your eye (a welcome screen with two options, a research report), its outputs come to you as a review in Needs you:

1. Look at the outputs. Each one has Pick this and Not this; Open wide shows them side by side.
2. Pick the one you want and choose Approve with its name (Approve B). Or write a note and choose Request changes.
3. Lea hears your decision and carries on. A Request changes starts the next round from your note.

Rounds you send back are free: they never count toward an item’s review limit. See Reviews and outputs.

When Lea “can’t work” or is “away”

Lea’s chip tells you when she cannot take a turn:

Chip	What it means	What to do
away	She runs on a runner that is offline. Your message is saved; her turn waits.	Start the runner (minga runner start), or choose another place for her to run.
can’t work	She runs in the cloud and the workspace has no usable API key, or the key was refused.	Add or fix the key in Settings › Model providers.
can’t work	The person who looks after her left the workspace.	Take her over in Project settings › Lea.
paused	Someone paused her. Messages wait until she is resumed.	Resume in Project settings › Lea.

Minga never switches her to another machine or provider on its own. See Choose where Lea runs.