We Banned Dead Links
💥 The problem: A real-estate site we built shipped with ten nav items. Seven of them went nowhere.
🔧 The fix: A new hard rule in every Godmode skill. No link, button, or form ships unless it works end-to-end. Cut the feature, never ship a stub.
✅ The result: Godmode 2.1.0, Godmode+ 2.1.0, Godmode Lite 2.1.0. Lower tiers ship a smaller surface, not a broken bigger one.
The Real-Estate Build
A test build came back with a polished header and a nav bar full of confidence. Listings, Sell, Buy, Mortgage, Agents, Blog, About, Careers, Contact. Nine sections, plus Home.
Three of those pages had real content. The other seven were either blank stubs, "coming soon" placeholders, or dropped you on a 404. From the front, the site looked like a finished product. From inside, it was scaffolding.
Real-world analogy: a restaurant with a twelve-page menu where nine of the dishes are crossed out. The menu makes the place look ambitious. The crossings make it look broken. Better to print three dishes you can actually serve.
3 worked end-to-end. 7 dropped users on a 404 or an empty stub. The site looked complete from the top of the homepage and broke the moment anyone clicked.
The New Rule
We added a section called Finished-feeling output to the top of every Godmode skill. It is a hard rule, not a guideline. It runs five bullets deep:
- No dead links. Every nav item, button and link either works end-to-end or is removed.
- No placeholder pages. No "coming soon", no Lorem ipsum, no greyed-out features waiting for a future release.
- No half-wired forms. Every dropdown, filter and selector either fully functions or is cut.
- Smaller surface beats broken bigger surface. When scope forces a cut, delete the feature. Never ship a stub of it.
- Tier ≠ completeness. A lower-tier build ships fewer features and simpler design, not the same surface with bits broken.
The last bullet is the one that changes how every tier works. Lite is not Plus minus polish. Lite is its own complete product, smaller in scope.
No dead links. No placeholder pages. No half-wired forms. Cut, do not stub. Tier difference is scope, not completeness.
Big & Broken vs Small & Done
Both of these are real-estate sites. Click any nav item in either mode and see what happens. The first one looks bigger. The second one is the one a buyer would actually trust.
BIG & BROKEN
- 10 nav items, 7 dead
- 3 of 10 clicks land somewhere real
- "coming soon" twice on the homepage
- buyer trust: gone in 12 seconds
SMALL & DONE
- 3 nav items, 3 working
- 3 of 3 clicks land somewhere real
- no placeholders, no 404s
- buyer trust: held through every click
Why Smaller Surface Wins
People judge a site in seconds. The first signal they read is whether anything is broken. A nav bar with seven dead pages tells them the whole thing is unfinished, even if the three that work are perfectly built.
Cut the seven. Keep the three. The visitor sees a small site that does what it says. Trust holds.
Core insight: a build is judged by its worst visible interaction, not its average. One dead link erases ten finished pages. The fix is to delete features that cannot be wired end-to-end, not to ship them broken with a polite note.
What Changed In 2.1.0
Three skills, same release. Each one bumps from 2.0.0 to 2.1.0 and gains the rule plus a final operating-rule that points back to it during the verification step.
| Skill | Version | Where the rule fires |
|---|---|---|
| Godmode Lite | 2.0.0 → 2.1.0 | Layer 4 (polish), final walk before reporting clean |
| Godmode | 2.0.0 → 2.1.0 | Layer 8 (polish), full link/button/form sweep |
| Godmode+ | 2.0.0 → 2.1.0 | Phase 6 (verify), actually clicks every flow before sign-off |
The rule sits above the layers as a top-level section so it is read first, then re-cited as the final operating-rule so the agent applies it as a stop-ship gate.
Godmode Lite at Layer 4. Godmode at Layer 8. Godmode+ at Phase 6 (which actually clicks every flow before sign-off). One rule, three enforcement points, all already shipped.
What This Means For Your Builds
Two outcomes you should now expect:
You will get
Builds with a tighter surface that all works. If a feature was risky, expect it to be cut and named in the report, not shipped half-wired with a note.
You will not get
A nav full of "coming soon" tabs, dropdowns that toggle nothing, or a 404 hiding behind the third menu item. Those are now stop-ship.
The rule applies to UI builds. For non-UI tasks (refactors, scripts, data jobs) the existing "no stubs, no TODOs" guard already covers it.
NO LONGER SHIPS
- "coming soon" tabs
- dropdowns that toggle nothing
- filters that no-op
- a 404 behind the third menu item
SHIPS INSTEAD
- tighter, working surface
- cuts named in the report
- tier = scope, not completeness
- buyer-trust kept on every click
If you see a build slip past this in a real run, that is a bug in the skill and worth telling us. The rule is meant to be enforced at the verify step in every tier.
Pull The Updated Skills
Godmode Lite, Godmode and Godmode+ are all on 2.1.0. Existing customers get the update automatically on next install.
Get the skills See tiers// promote_godmode
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