Feature Flow

A ticket-graph workflow for coding agents. Works with Claude Code and Codex.

Plan a feature as a graph of small tickets, then build them in the session you are already in. One command, /feature-flow, does both. Every ticket is built by one fresh subagent and checked by another that never saw the builder's reasoning. A script, not the agent, decides the order of the steps, runs the build and tests, and watches for work that weakens the checks, and the whole run has limits.

One skill, 2 agent roles, a Python conductor, 4 Python scripts, an installer for both agents, a demo and a test suite. All of it is Python (standard library only), so it runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. MIT licensed.

• Quick start · How a ticket flows · The skill and the roles · Plans and tickets
• See the graph · Long features and handoff · What is tested · Upgrading · Caution

Quick start

You need git and python3 (3.9 or later, standard library only), and Claude Code or Codex. No bash or awk is needed to run feature-flow: every script is Python. On Windows use python where this page says python3.

git clone https://github.com/hamilton-sky/feature-flow.git
cd feature-flow

python3 install.py /path/to/your/repo                  # for Claude Code
python3 install.py /path/to/your/repo --agent codex    # for Codex
python3 install.py /path/to/your/repo --agent all      # both, side by side

# `bash install.sh ...` still works on Linux and macOS: it only runs install.py

Without a clone, the same installer runs from PyPI:

uvx feature-flow-cli install /path/to/your/repo --agent all   # or: pipx run feature-flow-cli install ...

The package puts a feature-flow command on your PATH with install, status <feature> and view <feature>. It installs the same files, byte for byte, as install.py from a clone.

The installer lists what it wrote in .feature-flow/installed.txt. Commit those files (git add --pathspec-from-file=.feature-flow/installed.txt); until you do, the flow does not count them as uncommitted changes.

Then, in your repo, in the agent:

The same command plans when plans/csv-export/ does not exist yet and builds when it does. Commit the plan before you build it.

Planning asks you twice. First the session shows a short feature brief, written from your conversation (what, why, scope, the bar, and anything it had to assume), and waits for yes, edit or cancel. Then a fresh feature-planner subagent, given only that brief, reads the code, looks up outside docs where the code cannot answer, and writes a draft plan into the git-ignored .feature-flow/state/draft/. A fresh plan-reviewer checks the draft against the brief. The session shows you the goal, the commands, the ticket graph, what was dropped and the review result, and waits for a second yes. Only then does flow.py plan-accept copy the draft into plans/<feature>/.

Try the graph first, with no setup and no agent: bash examples/demo.sh --open.

What the installer does

Next to the feature-flow skill it installs architect-review and automation-design. The installer never deletes anything. A file that already exists and differs is kept and reported; --force replaces it. --dry-run shows what would change and writes nothing. CLAUDE_HOME and AGENTS_HOME move the user folders. With --user the skill goes to the user folder, but the scripts and .feature-flow/ stay in the repo, because the skill runs them from there.

The Claude Code skill is skills/feature-flow/. The Codex skill is written by hand in adapters/codex/feature-flow/, with an agents/openai.yaml that sets allow_implicit_invocation: false, so it runs only when you name it. The steps are the same; only the way a subagent is started differs. Your own AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md are never touched.

How a ticket flows

 smoke command (script): is the base healthy?   no ─► stop, spend nothing
        │ yes
        ▼
 pick ticket ─► builder subagent: claim, build, prove it (run fresh, read the output), commit
                                              │
                                              ▼
 gate (script):  Build, Test, Lint from commands.md           fail ─┐
                                              │ pass                │
                                              ▼                     │
 floor guard (script, no AI):                                       │
   tests skipped or deleted? checks silenced? empty catches?        │
   thresholds lowered? lint/test/CI config edited?             fail ─┤
   plan touched beyond own Status + Answer + appended lines?        │
                                              │ clean               │
                                              ▼                     │
 fresh reviewer subagent: sees only the ticket + diff,              │
 re-runs every Done when                                      FAIL ─┤
                                              │ PASS                ▼
                                              ▼        findings written into the ticket,
                                     next ticket       reopened, built again (3 rounds max)

scripts/flow.py is the conductor. The session asks it next, and it answers with one line: BUILD, REVIEW, DONE, STOP or HANDOFF. It prints the full prompt for each subagent from runtime-neutral guides, so the session never writes one itself.

What the script checks and what it trusts. The conductor verifies the build from the repo: the ticket file must say resolved, the tree must be clean and committed, and it runs the gate and the floor guard itself. It also checks that the reviewer changed no tracked file and made no commit. The review verdict is different: the reviewer's reply is relayed by the session, which saves it to a file and hands it to flow.py verdict. The script reads REVIEW: PASS or REVIEW: FAIL from that reply; it cannot prove the session passed it on unedited.

The skill and the roles

In Claude Code the reviewers' tool lists are enforced, so they cannot edit. A Codex subagent cannot be limited that way, so there the reviewers work from their instructions: the conductor stops the run if a ticket reviewer changed anything, and a planner's draft reaches plans/ only through plan-accept. On Codex the planner can research the web only if web search is on; otherwise it plans from the code and says so. The Codex planning path has not been run by hand.

The guides in guides/ (installed to .feature-flow/guides/) hold the protocol: how to build, review, write the brief, plan, review a plan and show. The skill holds only what differs per agent.

Plans and tickets

plans/
└── csv-export/
    ├── spec.md          what and why
    ├── map.md           destination, the bar, decisions so far     (workers append only)
    ├── commands.md      build, test, lint, smoke commands           (frozen once approved)
    ├── learnings.md     traps workers found                         (workers append only)
    └── tasks/
        ├── 01-types.md
        ├── 02-service.md
        └── 03-acceptance.md

commands.md and learnings.md are separate from the map because they follow different rules. Commands are approved by a human and read by the scripts, so they are frozen. Learnings grow with every ticket, so they are append only and a human prunes them (--check warns past 40 lines). The map stays short.

One markdown file per ticket in plans/<feature>/tasks/NN-slug.md:

# Add the retry policy to the job runner

Type: task                 task | settle | convert
Status: open               open | claimed | resolved | parked
Blocked by: 01, 02         or —
Test first: yes            yes | no
Floor: allow config        optional, only when a human decides the guard may let it through

...what to do and why...

## Not in this ticket
## Done when                 commands and the results they print
## Reference
## Answer                    Built, Proof, Decisions, Shortcuts taken, Review fixes, For later tickets

• Order comes from Blocked by, not from numbers. A ticket is ready when it is open and every ticket it is blocked by is resolved. Lowest number wins.
• Status lives only in the ticket files. map.md never repeats it.
• The Answers are the handoff between subagents. The next builder reads the Answers of the tickets it depends on.
• settle tickets record a decision. convert tickets migrate something and must be safe to run twice.
• A worker may change only its own Status line and Answer, lines appended to map.md and learnings.md, and the code the ticket calls for. Rewriting its own Done when, editing another ticket, or touching commands.md fails the guard.
• Floor: categories: skip, suppress, empty-catch, test-delete, threshold, config, ticket-edit, commands-edit. The line is read from the ticket as it was before the work started, so a worker cannot excuse itself.
• The guard needs the plan to be tracked by git. If you keep tickets in an ignored folder, it cannot see changes to them.
• The commands in commands.md run with nobody watching and must exit non zero on failure.

See the graph

python3 scripts/flow-view.py csv-export            write the page and open it
python3 scripts/flow-view.py csv-export --watch    keep it updating while tickets are built
bash examples/demo.sh --open                    try it on a made up project, no setup needed

One self contained HTML file: no server, no libraries, no network, light and dark. It is written to .git/flow-<feature>.html, so it never dirties the tree (--out FILE writes it elsewhere).

  01 types ──► 02 service ──► 04 acceptance        ● resolved  ◉ ready (pulses)
        └────► 03 wire ──────────┘                 ◌ being worked (spins)  ○ waiting
  ▶ replay ──●──────●─────○──────────   drag to scrub through the run

• Layered left to right, so the order of work is visible. Dashes flow along the edges into tickets that are ready to start.
• Replay plays the run back from git history: tickets turn green in the order they resolved, and a ticket sent back by the gate, the guard or the reviewer flashes red.
• Hover or click a ticket for its blockers, Done when, Answer, and the rounds it was sent back.
• Keys: space plays or pauses, the arrows step, End shows now, t switches theme. Reduced motion is respected.
• Safe by construction: ticket text comes from files an agent wrote, so it is escaped when embedded and only ever inserted as text.
• flow-status.py <feature> --json prints the same data for other tools. Mermaid (--mermaid) remains the choice for pull requests, because GitHub renders it.

Long features and handoff

A session's context fills up, so the flow moves to a fresh session every few tickets. After FLOW_TICKETS_PER_SESSION tickets (default 4) pass review, next prints a HANDOFF line instead of the next ticket, for example HANDOFF /feature-flow csv-export. The session stops and tells you to open a new session and type that line. The new session picks up exactly where the last one stopped. Set FLOW_TICKETS_PER_SESSION=0 to never hand off.

• One owner at a time. start gives the session a token, and every later call must carry it, so two sessions can never drive the same feature. HANDOFF and DONE release it.
• Resuming after a closed session. If a session ended without HANDOFF (you closed it, it crashed, it ran out of budget), the feature is still owned by it, and a new session stops and says so. Once you are sure the old session is gone, answer yes when the new session asks, or start it with FLOW_TAKEOVER=1. With auto the skill never takes over on its own.
• Relay mode. FLOW_RELAY=1 hands off after every build and every review, so each phase gets a session of its own.
• Nobody needs to watch. With auto the skill asks nothing, and a Claude Code cloud session keeps working while you are away. You only come back to type the HANDOFF line.

The state lives in .feature-flow/state/ (the state, a log of every step, and the last review reply). That folder ignores itself, so it never shows up in git status, and a normal Codex session can write it, which it cannot do under .git.

Commands and settings

python3 scripts/flow.py <feature> start|next|prompt|verdict <file>   the conductor (the skill runs it)
python3 scripts/flow-status.py <feature>                  table of tickets and which are READY
python3 scripts/flow-status.py <feature> --next           path of the next ready ticket (exit 10 = done, 11 = stuck)
python3 scripts/flow-status.py <feature> --counts         one line of counts
python3 scripts/flow-status.py <feature> --check          cycles, missing blockers, missing Done when, unordered mentions
python3 scripts/flow-status.py <feature> --mermaid        the ticket graph, coloured by status (add "plain" for none)
python3 scripts/flow-status.py <feature> --json           every ticket with status, blockers and readiness
python3 scripts/flow-view.py <feature> [--watch]          the animated graph page, opened in your browser
python3 scripts/gate.py <feature>                         run Build, Test and Lint from commands.md
python3 scripts/floor-guard.py <feature> <NN> [base]      check a ticket's diff, run from the repo root

The commands in commands.md run through bash -c on Linux and macOS and through the system shell (cmd.exe) on Windows, so write them for the platform your team uses, or call python as in the examples.

flow-status.py also understands the .scratch/<feature>/issues/ layout and the statuses done, ready-for-agent, ready-for-human and closed: FLOW_DIR=.scratch FLOW_TICKETS=issues.

The run also stops on its own after a number of steps that grows with the ticket count, so a loop of failures cannot go on forever.

What is tested

Trying it by hand

bash tests/smoke-real.sh --prepare /tmp/hello-try                    # the demo project, for Claude Code, no model is called
FLOW_AGENT=codex bash tests/smoke-real.sh --prepare /tmp/hello-codex # the same, for Codex

Then cd into it, start the agent and type /feature-flow hello (Codex: $feature-flow hello).

Tests

bash tests/run.sh
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests/py

Offline and free: no model is called. The suite covers the conductor's every answer and how a run stops, sessions, handoff and takeover, a .git the agent cannot write, the gate, the floor guard, plan protection, the prompts and guides, both skills, the installer for both agents, the graph page and its data, and the acceptance harness. The page's layout and replay logic are also tested under Node (tests/viewer-logic.test.js, skipped when Node is absent). .github/workflows/tests.yml runs it on every push to main and every pull request, on Ubuntu (once with mawk, once with gawk) and on macOS. A fourth job runs the Python unit tests on Windows, including a fixture drive that takes a two-ticket plan through python scripts/flow.py f start and next to BUILD and then REVIEW. tests/run.sh itself is a bash harness and does not run on Windows. Windows is tested this way only: no real agent run has been done there.

A package job builds the wheel and the sdist and runs tests/package_smoke.py on Ubuntu (Python 3.9 and the latest), macOS and Windows: it installs the wheel in a fresh virtual environment, runs feature-flow install, and checks that the repo gets the same files as from install.py in a clone. Run it locally with python3 -m pip install build && python3 tests/package_smoke.py.

RUN_REAL=1 bash tests/smoke-real.sh --interactive is the acceptance run with Claude Code. It runs real sessions on the demo project and spends money, which is why it asks for RUN_REAL=1.

Upgrading

Earlier versions had seven skills and an unattended loop. The five flow skills are gone, and /feature-flow replaces them:

• plan-feature → /feature-flow <feature> before a plan exists.
• /next-phase and /review-ticket → /feature-flow <feature>, which runs a builder and a fresh reviewer subagent for every ticket.
• show-flow → /feature-flow <feature> show.
• /run-flow and scripts/auto-flow.sh → /feature-flow <feature> auto, with a HANDOFF every few tickets. There is no cost log any more.

The installer never deletes the old skill folders, but it names any it finds. Delete them from .claude/skills/ or .agents/skills/ yourself.

Releasing to PyPI

The package is feature-flow-cli (the shorter feature-flow is likely refused by PyPI as too close to the existing featureflow). Its version is __version__ in feature_flow/__init__.py.

To release, bump __version__, merge it to main, then tag that commit and push the tag:

git tag v0.1.1 && git push origin v0.1.1

.github/workflows/release.yml checks that the tag matches __version__, builds the wheel and the sdist, runs tests/package_smoke.py on them and publishes them to PyPI. PyPI trusts the workflow as a trusted publisher (owner hamilton-sky, repository feature-flow, workflow release.yml, environment pypi), so no token is stored. PyPI never accepts the same version twice.

Caution

The builder subagent has edit and shell access and commits after each ticket. Each ticket costs at least two subagents. Build on a branch you can throw away. Ignore build output in .gitignore, because the conductor stops if the tree is dirty after a ticket. The gate runs your Build, Test and Lint commands with no time limit. The floor guard is pattern matching: it can miss things and it can raise false alarms, and Floor: allow is the release valve. The run stops on its own when a ticket stays unresolved, when the smoke test or the gate keeps failing, when a ticket keeps failing review, or when it reaches its step limit.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.