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+
+# teams without shared understanding
+
+## what happened
+
+having people on the team that don't know what's going on isn't a good feeling. don't trust each other, create issues, need to redo things. one person builds feature A while another person is also building feature A differently. nobody knows the plan because there was no plan.
+
+## why it's a gotcha
+
+you assume everyone's on the same page because you had a 5-minute conversation at the start. they're not. different mental models of the project lead to incompatible code, duplicated work, and arguments at 3am when you realize nothing fits together.
+
+## the fix
+
+before anyone writes a line of code, spend 15-30 minutes aligning on: what are we building, what's the MVP, who owns what, what's the tech stack. write it down — even a shared note works. revisit it when things change.
+
+## see also
+
+- [[unclear-roles]] — a specific kind of misalignment
+- [[figure-out-what-you-want-before-partners]] — alignment starts before the team forms
+- [[solo-vs-bad-team]] — when misalignment is bad enough, solo is better
+- [[relay-build-fallacy]] — shared understanding breaks down even harder across handoffs
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