docflow

A plugin for ADR-driven, documentation-led projects, working on Claude Code, Claude Cowork, pi, Codex, and OpenCode from the same skill files (see Install). It installs a bootstrap skill that scaffolds (or retrofits) an Architecture Decision Record (ADR) catalogue, a plan queue, and AGENTS.md conventions into any repository, plus a set of lifecycle skills that author, queue, ship, and audit ADRs — so the project can be driven by both humans and coding agents from a small set of canonical files. For the formal definition of the conventions — why they help and where they fall short — see the methodology.

Skills

Slash commands below are the Claude Code form. On the pi coding agent the same skills are invoked as /skill:<name> (e.g. /skill:bootstrap, /skill:new-adr). See Install.

Skill	Slash command	Purpose
bootstrap	/bootstrap	Scaffold or retrofit the whole convention set. Start here.
new-adr	/new-adr	Author one ADR — next contiguous number, right shape, INDEX + domain wiring, supersede linkage.
new-plan	/new-plan	Add a plan/todo item tracing to its owning ADR(s).
ship-item	/ship-item	Run the completion event: verify → integrate → todo→done → ADR Accepted→Implemented → INDEX/WORKLOG.
add-convention	/add-convention	Assess whether a convention is worth codifying, route it to the right home (or to an ADR), then add it. Use it to enable optional practices (e.g. TDD) on demand — see USAGE §5a.
audit	/audit	Lint the repo against its own conventions — numbering, INDEX sync, plan coverage, ADR-privacy leaks, more.
brainstorm	/brainstorm	Decompose a problem into candidate ADRs + plan items (proposes drafts; writes nothing until approved).
agent-wave	/agent-wave	Orchestrate a wave of parallel worktree subagents over the queue, with checkpoint or continuous supervision.
rollup	/rollup	For a multi-repo product: aggregate every member repo's ADRs into one derived, product-wide roll-up (run from the home repo).

The lifecycle skills all read CONVENTIONS.md first and honour the choices the bootstrap recorded (ADR shape, status lifecycle, integration model, multi-agent mode). They refuse to run on an un-bootstrapped repo and point you at /bootstrap.

What /bootstrap installs

• AGENTS.md — hard rules for coding agents (the entry point).
• CLAUDE.md — one-liner re-exporting AGENTS.md so Claude Code picks it up automatically.
• CONVENTIONS.md — authoring rules for ADRs, naming, status lifecycle, audit trail, and git contract.
• INDEX.md — generated table of all ADRs.
• adr/ — ADR catalogue with a capability-ADR template (and an optional technology-ADR template).
• plan/todo/ and plan/done/ — implementation queue. git mv from todo/ to done/ is the completion event.
• _agent/ — multi-agent coordination: ROLES.md, LOCKS.md, WORKLOG.md, CURRENT_FOCUS.md, HANDOFF.md, and an optional unsupervised-run prompt under prompts/.

Optional, off by default: GLOSSARY.md, domains/<slug>/README.md groupings, project-specific hard rules (vendor-naming restriction, regulated-evidence posture, language mandate, audit-stream separation).

Why

Documentation-led projects rot when conventions live in someone's head. This plugin makes the conventions explicit, machine-readable, and applied uniformly — so a fresh contributor (human or agent) can pick up the repo with no oral handover.

It works equally well on fresh repos (scaffolds from zero) and on existing repos (retrofits, preserving and merging existing files rather than overwriting them).

Multi-repo products

A single product spread across several repositories can run as a federation. At bootstrap a repo declares whether it is standalone or part of a multi-repo product, and whether it is establishing a new federation or joining one — a joining repo only ever writes its own back-pointer, never into another repo. You pick a topology (central decisions repo · distributed · home-repo-plus-local), and the convention set keeps numbering contiguous per repo while a federation-wide identity is the cross-repo key. The rollup skill aggregates every member's catalogue into one product-wide view, and audit gains cross-repo checks (membership, identity collisions, dangling references, roll-up drift, convention drift). Work and status cross repos the same way: a cross-repo decision is one plan item per affected repo, and its aggregate status ("2 of 3 repos") surfaces in the roll-up. No tool writes across a repo boundary; consistency is declared at the edges and enforced by audit. See the methodology for the full model.

Install

docflow ships from one skill source (plugins/docflow/skills/) to five coding agents — only the packaging differs. Two surfaces: the scaffolded output (AGENTS.md, the ADR catalogue, plan/, _agent/) is plain Markdown read natively by any agent that loads AGENTS.md; the skills are SKILL.md files the host discovers.

Agent	Output	Skills	Install	Invoke
Claude Code	native	✅	marketplace (below)	/bootstrap
Claude Cowork	native	✅	same Claude Code plugin	/bootstrap
pi	native	✅	pi install npm:@evolvehq/docflow	/skill:bootstrap
Codex	native	✅	codex plugin marketplace add EvolveHQ/docflow	$bootstrap / /skills
OpenCode	native	✅	auto-discovered, or symlink into ~/.config/opencode/skills	auto, by description

Handy: OpenCode also reads ~/.claude/skills/ and ~/.agents/skills/, so a shared skills directory can serve it alongside another agent.

Claude Code — from this marketplace

/plugin marketplace add EvolveHQ/docflow
/plugin install docflow@evolvehq

Invoke with /bootstrap, /new-adr, /ship-item, … (auto-triggers on matching requests too).

Claude Cowork

Cowork uses the same plugin system as Claude Code, so install the docflow plugin exactly as above (/plugin marketplace add EvolveHQ/docflow, then install) — or from Anthropic's community marketplace once listed. No separate packaging.

pi coding agent

pi install git:github.com/EvolveHQ/docflow

or, once published to npm, pi install npm:@evolvehq/docflow. Pi auto-discovers the skills via the pi.skills key in package.json. Invoke with /skill:bootstrap, /skill:new-adr, /skill:ship-item, … Pi does not auto-trigger skills from their descriptions the way Claude Code does — invoke them explicitly (the agent will also load a skill on-demand when a task clearly matches).

The scaffolded output (AGENTS.md, CONVENTIONS.md, the ADR catalogue, plan/, _agent/) is plain Markdown and is read natively by pi's hierarchical AGENTS.md loading — no porting needed.

Codex (OpenAI)

docflow ships a Codex plugin (.codex-plugin/), so it's a one-command install from this repo's marketplace:

codex plugin marketplace add EvolveHQ/docflow
codex plugin add docflow@evolvehq

Codex reads the scaffolded AGENTS.md natively. Invoke with $bootstrap / /skills, or just describe the task (Codex auto-triggers from the skill description); the assessment questions fall back to plain A/B/C text where there is no select tool. Update later with codex plugin marketplace upgrade.

OpenCode (sst)

OpenCode auto-discovers skills from .claude/skills, .agents/skills, and .opencode/skills (project and global) — so if you already run docflow on Claude Code or Codex via a shared skills directory, OpenCode picks it up with no extra step. Standalone, symlink the skills into OpenCode's global directory (one command, stays in sync with the clone):

git clone https://github.com/EvolveHQ/docflow ~/.docflow-src
ln -s ~/.docflow-src/plugins/docflow/skills/* ~/.config/opencode/skills/

OpenCode has no marketplace command for SKILL.md skills (its plugin system is for npm JS plugins), so a shared skills directory is the clean path. Skills auto-load by description.

Claude Code — local development (no install)

claude --plugin-dir <path-to-this-repo>

Direct skill clone (no plugin lifecycle)

git clone https://github.com/EvolveHQ/docflow ~/.docflow-src
ln -s ~/.docflow-src/plugins/docflow/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

On Windows, copy plugins\docflow\skills\* into %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\ instead of symlinking.

Quick start

In any repo, run:

/bootstrap

or just say "set up documentation-led conventions in this repo", "bootstrap ADRs and a plan queue", or "scaffold AGENTS.md and the _agent/ layout". The skill auto-triggers on those phrasings.

The skill will:

1. Detect whether the repo is fresh or existing, and state which.
2. Ask 10 assessment questions to tune the conventions to the project — one at a time, with a recommended option for each.
3. Summarise the resulting plan and ask for sign-off.
4. Write (or Edit, for existing repos) the files.
5. Commit each logical group with a Conventional Commit message.
6. On existing repos, offer to backfill ADRs, plan/done/, and CONVENTIONS.md additions from the existing code and git history — drafts only, approved in batches before anything commits.

Updating

Recipients refresh installations with:

/plugin marketplace update evolvehq
/plugin install docflow@evolvehq

See USAGE.md §Updating the plugin for the author-side flow (version bumps, release tags) and recipient options including /reload-plugins for live sessions.

Full usage and customisation guide

See USAGE.md for the assessment questions, what each answer changes, the file-by-file output, the backfill flow, and how to extend or override the templates.

Layout

docflow/
  .claude-plugin/marketplace.json   # Claude Code / Cowork marketplace (-> ./plugins/docflow)
  .agents/plugins/marketplace.json  # Codex marketplace (-> ./plugins/docflow)
  package.json                      # pi manifest (pi.skills -> ./plugins/docflow/skills) + npm
  plugins/docflow/                  # the plugin — one source, every target
    .claude-plugin/plugin.json      #   Claude Code / Cowork plugin manifest
    .codex-plugin/plugin.json       #   Codex plugin manifest (skills -> ./skills)
    skills/                         #   the one skill source
      bootstrap/
        SKILL.md                    #   bootstrap: assessment + output sequence + backfill
        templates/                  #   files the bootstrap reads and writes into target repos
      new-adr/SKILL.md              #   lifecycle skills — operate on a bootstrapped repo,
      new-plan/SKILL.md             #     read CONVENTIONS.md, honour its choices
      ship-item/SKILL.md
      add-convention/SKILL.md
      audit/SKILL.md
      brainstorm/SKILL.md
      agent-wave/SKILL.md
      rollup/SKILL.md
  README.md
  USAGE.md

Only the bootstrap skill uses plugins/docflow/skills/bootstrap/templates/. The lifecycle skills act on the copies the bootstrap wrote into the target repo (e.g. its adr/0000-template.md), so they carry no templates of their own.

License

MIT. Use it, fork it, change it. If you improve a template, a PR is welcome.