If you’ve ever inherited a repo that felt like a haunted house — you open a folder and something jumps out at you (Docker configs, half-broken YAML, strange bmad-output-00.md files) — then you’ll know how I felt walking into my own AI-Dev workspace.

The Starting Point: Beautiful Chaos

What started as an experiment with BMAD-METHOD™ (a 42k-line, multi-agent beast) and some rough starter templates quickly spiraled into something that would make even the most battle-hardened developer wince:

• Duplicate directories (~/ai-dev/vibe-prd, ~/vibe-prd, /tmp/BMAD-METHOD)
• Overlapping systems (BMAD container outputs vs. my own template library)
• Confused workflows (was it make prd, make ai-dev, or something else?)
• CI failures that wouldn’t turn green no matter how much I begged

It was enough to scare away any potential contributor, and honestly, it slowed me down too.

The Vision Behind the Mess

But here’s the thing: I believed in the end goal. I wanted:

• A library of professional templates (not just placeholders, but CTO-level docs)
• A simple entry point for new devs (copy/paste, answer one question, get 22 enterprise docs)
• A dual-AI setup: Claude Code for magic bulk generation, Cursor IDE for structured development

The vision was clear. The path to get there? Not so much.

So I decided to burn it all down and rebuild it.

The Turning Point

The first “aha” moment was realizing I didn’t need BMAD to run the show. It was great inspiration — a 42,000-line testament to what’s possible with AI agents — but my repo needed to be:

1. Simple (no Docker or npm required)
2. Focused (one canonical repo root: ~/ai-dev/)
3. Document-first (templates drive everything)

That meant:

• Archiving BMAD into archive/bmad-method/ (safe, but out of the way)
• Stripping my Makefile down from 57 lines to just 12 lines
• Rebuilding templates from scratch — taking the killer seeds and enhancing them into 22 enterprise-grade frameworks

Lessons from the Cleanup

Preserve, Don’t Delete

I didn’t want to burn bridges. BMAD and all legacy files were archived, not destroyed. You never know when you’ll need that weird edge case solution from 6 months ago.

Simplicity Beats Power

A clean 2-step workflow beats a monster 10-step one. Every. Single. Time.

Documentation is the Product

The README itself became the “magic portal” — copy/paste one Claude prompt, and you’re in business. No setup. No dependencies. Just results.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Before cleanup:

• Setup time: 30-60 minutes
• Dependencies: Docker, Node, Make, BMAD
• Success rate: ~60% (if Docker behaved)
• User confusion level: High

After cleanup:

• Setup time: 30 seconds
• Dependencies: None
• Success rate: 100%
• User confusion level: Zero

What’s Next

In Part 2, I’ll show how I turned 4 rough templates into a 22-template enterprise library — with line counts that would make a CTO nod in approval (average ~1,500 lines each). We’re talking about documents that actually ship products, not just placeholders that gather dust.

The journey from chaos to clarity wasn’t just about cleaning up files. It was about democratizing enterprise-grade documentation practices and making them accessible to everyone — from solo developers to Fortune 500 teams.

Stay tuned for Part 2: “Evolving Templates into an Enterprise Library”

Series Navigation:

• Part 1: The Mess (and Why It Mattered) ← You are here
• Part 2: Evolving Templates into an Enterprise Library (coming soon)
• Part 3: From Templates to One-Paste Magic (coming soon)
• Part 4: Dual AI Workflows — Claude Meets Cursor (coming soon)