HARDENING CYCLE
Three gates before any legacy code changes.
Legacy refactors stall because teams start without understanding the full blast radius. Wakalix gates every refactor on safety, scope, and continuity — investigate first, then produce stable, reviewable increments.
Bring one legacy refactor01
Safety gate
Map the blast radius before anything changes
Read the callgraph, the test coverage, and the last 6 months of commits. Identify which changes are safe to make atomically and which will propagate into adjacent modules.
Questions answered:
What is the current test coverage?
What depends on the target code?
What will break if the interface changes?
What is the current test coverage?
What depends on the target code?
What will break if the interface changes?
02
Scope gate
Find a stable increment that lands without intermediate breakage
Break the refactor into work items that each leave main in a valid state. No "we'll fix it in the next PR" chains — every increment is a clean stop.
Questions answered:
What is the smallest safe batch?
Can each batch merge independently?
What is explicitly deferred?
What is the smallest safe batch?
Can each batch merge independently?
What is explicitly deferred?
03
Continuity gate
Scope the handoff before the cycle ends
At cycle close, document what moved, what was deferred, and what your team needs to continue. Refactors that end without a continuation guide resume poorly.
Handoff includes:
Completed changes with rationale
Deferred scope and risk notes
Next increment recommendation
Completed changes with rationale
Deferred scope and risk notes
Next increment recommendation
Characterise first
Read before changing
The architect reads the codebase, git history, and test results before proposing any change. Every refactor starts with a characterisation, not a diff.
Stable increments
No half-refactored state in main
Each batch is scoped to merge cleanly without leaving main in a broken intermediate state. Reviewers see diffs that stand alone.
Tests travel with changes
Coverage improves batch by batch
Every refactor batch adds or restores test coverage. Handing off legacy code with higher coverage than you received is the bar.
In wakalix, a legacy refactor is a gate-controlled cycle, not an exploratory effort. The characterisation pass comes first — no code changes until the safety gate is passed. Then increments land in order, each independently mergeable, each with tests. Cycles close with a clean handoff: what changed, what the rationale was, and what the next team should do. Legacy code that passes through this cycle ends up better understood, not just reformatted.
Bring one legacy codebase problem.
We'll investigate, gate the risk, and produce stable increments your engineers review before they merge.
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