Development Workflow

Hyprlayer gives you a spec-driven development workflow. Each step writes an artifact to the thoughts directory, where it survives the session and your teammates can read it.

The Workflow

Research → Plan → Implement → Validate → Commit → Review → Ship

1. Research

/research_codebase

Explore and document how existing code works. The agent spawns parallel sub-agents to analyze different parts of the codebase and writes findings to the thoughts directory, where a future session can pick them up.

When to use: Before starting any significant work, when onboarding to unfamiliar code, or when you need to understand how components interact.

2. Plan

/create_plan

Build a phased implementation plan through interactive research and iteration. The agent works with you to understand the problem, research the codebase, and produce a detailed technical specification with success criteria for each phase.

The agent saves plans to thoughts/shared/plans/, and you refine them with /iterate_plan.

When to use: Before implementing any non-trivial feature or change.

3. Implement

/implement_plan thoughts/shared/plans/2026-03-08-my-feature.md

Execute the plan phase-by-phase. The agent reads the plan, implements each phase, verifies success criteria, and ticks the plan’s checkboxes as it finishes each section.

When to use: After you’ve reviewed and approved a plan.

4. Validate

/validate_plan thoughts/shared/plans/2026-03-08-my-feature.md

Verify the implementation against the plan’s success criteria. The agent checks each phase against its criteria, runs tests, and flags deviations.

When to use: After implementation is complete, before creating a PR.

5. Commit

/commit

Create atomic git commits for the changes. The agent reviews what changed, groups related files, drafts commit messages, and asks for confirmation before committing.

6. Review

/code_review

Run an adversarial review of the branch’s diff against its base. The skill picks the codex CLI for a cross-model second opinion when it finds one, and otherwise spawns the adversarial-reviewer subagent in a fresh context window. It reads and never writes. The reviewer hunts for the ways your code will fail in production.

When to use: Right before opening a PR, after /commit has produced the diff you want reviewed.

7. Ship

/describe_pr

Generate a PR description from a template stored in thoughts/shared/pr_description.md. The agent analyzes the diff, runs verification steps, and fills out each section of the template.

Supporting Commands

Command	Purpose
/iterate_plan	Refine an existing plan based on feedback
/create_handoff	Write a handoff document to transfer context to another session
/resume_handoff	Pick up work from a handoff document
/local_review	Set up a worktree to review a colleague’s branch
/founder_mode	Retroactively create a JIRA ticket and PR for already-implemented work
/cost_estimate	Estimate development costs for a feature

Command Variants

Most commands have variants for different contexts:

• Base (/create_plan): full workflow with thoughts directory integration
• _nt (/create_plan_nt): no thoughts; skips the thoughts directory for repos that don’t use it
• _generic (/create_plan_generic): generic version for use outside Hyprlayer

See Command Variants for details.