Professor Tesa — Emerald green dress, pearl earrings, hair in a French twist — meeting the client
“Tell me what you need. Not what you think you need — what the business actually requires. I'll figure out the rest.”
Every project flows through a series of gates. You can't skip ahead — each gate must be approved before the next opens.
Gates:
1. `intake_draft` — Raw requirements captured
2. `intake_approved` — Client confirms scope
3. `visuals_generated` — ERDs, user flows, sitemaps produced
4. `visuals_approved` — Client signs off on architecture
5. `deliverables_planned` — Every artifact defined with acceptance criteria
6. `deliverables_approved` — Client confirms what will be built
7. `generation_started` → `generation_complete` — Code flows
This is how you avoid the "I thought you meant..." conversation six weeks into a project.
Tesa says:
“Gates exist because surprises are expensive. Every misunderstanding caught at intake saves 100x what it would cost to fix in production.”