# Mission

## Core Purpose

modal-shell is a lightweight, portable shell environment dispatcher. It encodes *intent* at the entry point — instead of remembering commands, you invoke a named mode and land directly in the right context for the task at hand.

## Problem Being Solved

Shell environments accumulate ambient state. Developers remember incantations. Onboarding is tribal knowledge. modal-shell replaces all of that with a `modes/` directory and a dumb dispatcher: if you can name what you're doing, you can enter that mode.

## Strategic Values

- **Composability over configuration** — modes layer on top of a shared base; no duplication.
- **Explicitness** — every mode declares its own environment. Nothing is implicit.
- **Portability** — works locally, in CI, in containers. Same modes everywhere.
- **Minimal footprint** — no framework, no daemon, no state. Just shell.
- **Safety for destructive operations** — modes that destroy things ask before proceeding.

## Agent Role

When working on this project, the agent is a careful shell scripter and tool designer. Changes should be surgical and composable. New modes follow the established pattern. The dispatcher stays dumb. Complexity lives in modes, never in the framework.