Daily Usage Patterns¶

Best practices for using Nexus-Dev in your everyday development workflow.

Starting a Coding Session¶

Begin each session by loading project context:

Call get_project_context() to see project statistics and recent lessons.

This helps your AI assistant:

Understand the project scope
Recall recent lessons and insights
Provide more contextual suggestions

Before Writing New Code¶

Search First¶

Before implementing a feature, check if similar code exists:

Search the knowledge base for "email validation" to see if we already have utilities for this.

Benefits:

Avoid duplicate implementations
Follow existing patterns
Learn from past implementations

Check for Lessons¶

When starting work on an area with known complexity:

Search lessons for any issues related to "payment processing"

During Development¶

Record Discoveries¶

When you learn something non-obvious:

Record an insight: I discovered that the third-party API requires URL encoding for special characters in query parameters.

Index New Files¶

After creating significant new modules:

Index the new authentication module: src/auth/

After Debugging¶

Record the Solution¶

After solving a non-trivial bug:

Record a lesson:
- Problem: "TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable in user_service.py"
- Solution: "Added null check for user profile before accessing nested fields"

Include Code Examples¶

Record a lesson with code:
- Problem: Race condition in async cache update
- Solution: Added asyncio.Lock() around cache operations
- Code: [paste the before/after]

Code Review¶

Use Custom Agents¶

If you have the code_reviewer agent:

Ask code_reviewer to review src/api/endpoints.py for security and best practices.

Search for Patterns¶

When reviewing unfamiliar code:

Search for similar implementations of "rate limiting" in the codebase.

Documentation¶

Keep Docs Updated¶

After significant changes, re-index documentation:

nexus-index docs/ -r

Use doc_writer Agent¶

Ask doc_writer to create API documentation for the UserService class.

End of Session¶

Record Implementations¶

After completing a feature:

Record implementation:
- Title: "Add OAuth2 login"
- Summary: "Implemented OAuth2 authentication with Google and GitHub providers"
- Approach: "Used authlib for OAuth flow, JWT for session tokens"
- Decisions: ["Chose JWT over sessions for stateless scaling", "Added 30-day remember me option"]

Commit Lessons¶

If you recorded lessons during the session, commit them:

git add .nexus/lessons/
git commit -m "Add lessons from debugging session"

Weekly Maintenance¶

Review Project Context¶

Show me recent lessons and insights from the past week.

Re-index if Needed¶

After major refactoring:

nexus-reindex

Check Database Stats¶

nexus-status

Team Collaboration¶

Commit lessons to git so team members benefit:

git add .nexus/lessons/
git commit -m "Add lessons: database connection pooling"
git push

Pull New Lessons¶

After pulling changes:

# Re-index to include new lessons
nexus-index .nexus/lessons/ -r

Quick Reference¶

Common Commands¶

# Check status
nexus-status

# Index new code
nexus-index src/new_module/ -r

# Search from CLI
nexus-search "authentication"

# Full re-index
nexus-reindex

Common AI Prompts¶

# Start session
Call get_project_context()

# Before coding
Search for existing implementations of "caching"

# After debugging
Record a lesson about the TypeError I just fixed

# After feature
Record the implementation of the new API endpoint

Anti-patterns to Avoid¶

❌ Don't	✅ Do Instead
Skip searching before coding	Always search first
Forget to record lessons	Record immediately after fixing bugs
Index rarely	Index after significant changes
Ignore project context	Call `get_project_context()` at session start
Keep lessons local only	Commit lessons to share with team