Gusto

Build me a focused HR, recruiting, payroll and workforce operations workflow for the personal core of Gusto. Requirements:

- Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, and Docker Compose. Model employees, leave requests, approval decisions, policy versions, and audit events; keep stable source IDs and timestamps.
- Paid product context: Track employees, documents, leave, and onboarding without calculating or moving payroll. Build only this DIY scope: Track employees, documents, leave, and onboarding, maintain approvals and records, and export data without calculating or moving payroll or making employment decisions.
- Implement employees, teams, roles, documents, leave requests, equipment, onboarding tasks, and acknowledgements.
- Add approval workflows, expiry reminders, export, retention, deletion holds, and encrypted backups.
- Keep compensation fields optional and never calculate payroll, taxes, benefits, or statutory filings.
- Use a local web page with input, progress, review, and export views. Required input or access: private self-hosted deployment; strict admin access.
- Recovery: Ship Docker Compose, health checks, disaster recovery, and an emergency-access procedure.
- Acceptance: with one labelled sample, show the input, saved intermediate state, and exported result; verify this invariant: A rejected or withdrawn request cannot change the approved balance; a policy edit must not rewrite past decisions.
- Out of scope: payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support; payroll rails. Keep this a personal, inspectable workflow.
- Include a README with setup, a sample input, required keys or permissions, data location, and the supported scope.

# AGENTS.md — Build guide for Gusto

## Project scope
Track employees, documents, leave, and onboarding, maintain approvals and records, and export data without calculating or moving payroll or making employment decisions.

Catalogue verdict: no. A consolation build is possible, but the paid product's decisive value sits outside a solo rebuild. For Gusto, track employees, documents, leave, and onboarding without calculating or moving payroll. The hard boundary is payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support, plus compliance, payroll, and regulated integrations.
Use the implementation prompt below to define the deliverable. Complete each phase's acceptance checks before extending the scope.

## Working agreement
- Inspect the repository and its existing instructions before choosing paths, dependencies or commands. Keep one coherent stack and explain changes to the proposed architecture.
- Plan a vertical slice that accepts a real input and produces the useful output described below. Persist only the state the prompt calls for; respect memory-only and upstream-managed workflows. Use fixtures only when they are clearly labelled.
- After scaffolding, document the actual install, development, check and build commands in README and keep them synchronized with the package or project manifest. Do not report commands as successful unless they ran.
- Work in small steps. At handoff, list implemented flows, checks actually performed, remaining blockers, and any credentials or provider setup the owner must supply.
- Do not publish, spend money, contact customers, delete source data or run irreversible migrations without the project owner's authorization.

## Prerequisites
- PostgreSQL
- private self-hosted deployment
- strict admin access
- documented retention policy

## Stack and architecture
- Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, and Docker Compose.
- Model employees, leave requests, approval decisions, policy versions, and audit events; keep stable source IDs and timestamps.
- Interface for this HR, recruiting, payroll and workforce operations workflow: a local web page with input, progress, review, and export views.

## Security and data integrity
- Ship Docker Compose, health checks, disaster recovery, and an emergency-access procedure.
- Validate imported records and file paths; keep user data within the storage location named in the prompt.
- State the practical limit: payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support.

## Agent implementation rules
- Project rule, data: Model employees, leave requests, approval decisions, policy versions, and audit events; keep stable source IDs and timestamps.
- Project rule, behavior: Implement employees, teams, roles, documents, leave requests, equipment, onboarding tasks, and acknowledgements.
- Project rule, recovery: Ship Docker Compose, health checks, disaster recovery, and an emergency-access procedure.

## Optional agent skills and references
No installable skill is listed for this guide; use the project rules and the stack documentation.

Read the linked SKILL.md and its dependencies before adding a skill. Select only the skills matching this project's runtime and task; their documentation does not supply API access, credentials or approval to perform external actions. Pin the reviewed revision where the tool supports it. Follow the chosen agent's documented project-level installation mechanism.

## Distribution ideas
These are optional planning notes. Obtain the owner's approval before publishing or contacting anyone.
- Demonstrate this HR, recruiting, payroll and workforce operations operation with sample or user-owned data: Implement employees, teams, roles, documents, leave requests, equipment, onboarding tasks, and acknowledgements.
- Show a concrete result or export: Add approval workflows, expiry reminders, export, retention, deletion holds, and encrypted backups.
- State the practical limit: payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support.

## Engineering roadmap
1. Phase 1, architecture and data: Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, and Docker Compose. Model employees, leave requests, approval decisions, policy versions, and audit events; keep stable source IDs and timestamps.
2. Phase 2, implement: Implement employees, teams, roles, documents, leave requests, equipment, onboarding tasks, and acknowledgements.
3. Phase 3, implement: Add approval workflows, expiry reminders, export, retention, deletion holds, and encrypted backups.
4. Phase 4, review and output: Keep compensation fields optional and never calculate payroll, taxes, benefits, or statutory filings. Add approval workflows, expiry reminders, export, retention, deletion holds, and encrypted backups.
5. Phase 5, recovery and acceptance: Ship Docker Compose, health checks, disaster recovery, and an emergency-access procedure. Verify this invariant with a saved fixture: A rejected or withdrawn request cannot change the approved balance; a policy edit must not rewrite past decisions. State the practical limit: payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support.

## Paid-product capabilities outside this build
- payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support
- payroll rails
- tax and labor-law compliance
- benefits integrations
- identity checks and global employment infrastructure

## Implementation prompt
Build me a focused HR, recruiting, payroll and workforce operations workflow for the personal core of Gusto. Requirements:

- Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, and Docker Compose. Model employees, leave requests, approval decisions, policy versions, and audit events; keep stable source IDs and timestamps.
- Paid product context: Track employees, documents, leave, and onboarding without calculating or moving payroll. Build only this DIY scope: Track employees, documents, leave, and onboarding, maintain approvals and records, and export data without calculating or moving payroll or making employment decisions.
- Implement employees, teams, roles, documents, leave requests, equipment, onboarding tasks, and acknowledgements.
- Add approval workflows, expiry reminders, export, retention, deletion holds, and encrypted backups.
- Keep compensation fields optional and never calculate payroll, taxes, benefits, or statutory filings.
- Use a local web page with input, progress, review, and export views. Required input or access: private self-hosted deployment; strict admin access.
- Recovery: Ship Docker Compose, health checks, disaster recovery, and an emergency-access procedure.
- Acceptance: with one labelled sample, show the input, saved intermediate state, and exported result; verify this invariant: A rejected or withdrawn request cannot change the approved balance; a policy edit must not rewrite past decisions.
- Out of scope: payroll rails, tax filing, benefits, banking, compliance, and support; payroll rails. Keep this a personal, inspectable workflow.
- Include a README with setup, a sample input, required keys or permissions, data location, and the supported scope.

## Completion evidence
Demonstrate the prompt's acceptance scenarios against the scoped workflow. Include setup from a clean checkout and failure recovery. Check persistence across restart and export/restore only for the state the prompt says to store; for memory-only tools, confirm that temporary content is discarded as specified. Record actual results and remaining limitations. A detailed plan alone does not establish a working replacement.