Type-first TypeScript coding practices — designing types before implementation, making illegal states unrepresentable with discriminated unions, runtime validation with Zod at system boundaries, and module organization (single-function modules, barrel files, encapsulation). Use when starting a new feature by asking what the types should look like first, spotting an interface with too many optional fields that let impossible combinations compile, or deciding how to validate data coming from outside the type system (an API response, form input, environment variables).