Repository-agnostic hybrid dev loop. Routes an incoming ticket (GitHub Issue,
Jira, or any adapter) into one of two lanes by label: an AUTONOMOUS lane
(small/mundane work → the dyflo-watcher runs it headless,
one-ticket-one-PR-exit) or a HITL lane (big/risky work → a research stage
computes blast radius and picks an architecture pattern, emits a draft ADR you
approve, then TRIP plans/implements/releases with human gates). Use when the
user says "dyflo", "assign this ticket", "research this issue before I plan
it", "route this ticket", "set up the hybrid agent loop", "run the research
stage", or wants the launcher that turns on assign-or-do-it-yourself. The
research stage is the core: it fuses Graphify blast radius + the vendored
pattern catalog and MAY conclude "no pattern needed" — downgrading a small
ticket straight to the autonomous lane with zero ceremony. Non-goals: it does
not merge PRs, does not schedule cron/launchd, and never escalates a small
ticket into unattended execution — the research stage onl
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Repository-agnostic hybrid dev loop. Routes an incoming ticket (GitHub Issue,
Jira, or any adapter) into one of two lanes by label: an AUTONOMOUS lane
(small/mundane work → the dyflo-watcher runs it headless,
one-ticket-one-PR-exit) or a HITL lane (big/risky work → a research stage
computes blast radius and picks an architecture pattern, emits a draft ADR you
approve, then TRIP plans/implements/releases with human gates). Use when the
user says "dyflo", "assign this ticket", "research this issue before I plan
it", "route this ticket", "set up the hybrid agent loop", "run the research
stage", or wants the launcher that turns on assign-or-do-it-yourself. The
research stage is the core: it fuses Graphify blast radius + the vendored
pattern catalog and MAY conclude "no pattern needed" — downgrading a small
ticket straight to the autonomous lane with zero ceremony. Non-goals: it does
not merge PRs, does not schedule cron/launchd, and never escalates a small
ticket into unattended execution — the research stage only ever downgrades.
Dyflo — hybrid autonomous + HITL dev loop (/dyflo)
One entry point wraps any repo. From it you either assign work (hand off a
ticket, the system routes it) or do the work yourself (an interactive session
with Graphify + ponytail + TRIP loaded). Small work runs headless; big work runs
through research → your approval → TRIP.
none (PR only; a human merges — run /code-review <pr#> first, plus /security-review if the diff touches auth/secrets/validation)
HITL
hitl / unlabeled
research stage → TRIP
ADR approval, plan, diff
The router only downgrades (research may relabel hitl→auto). It never
auto-escalates a small ticket into unattended execution. That is the one safety
invariant of the whole system.
Prerequisites (bootstrap once per repo — dyflo.sh does this)
Graph:graphify update . at repo root → graphify-out/graph.json. Enable
the graphify MCP server (install.sh registers it; mcp-server.json has the
block for manual setup). Keep it current: graphify hook install (post-commit
re-index, AST-only).
Ponytail in the autonomous lane: vendor ponytail's AGENTS.md into the repo
(the watcher go-prompt already treats CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md as mandatory). See the
vendor-ponytail reference.
Labels:auto, hitl exist on the ticket source.
Watcher:/dyflo-watcher set up for the auto label (ships with Dyflo — Tessy/Quin specialist briefs included).
The research stage (run for every hitl/unlabeled ticket)
This is the component that exists in none of the upstream tools. Given a ticket
envelope {id, title, body, labels}, produce EITHER a NO_PATTERN downgrade OR a
draft ADR. Steps:
1 — Blast radius (Graphify)
Identify the symbols/files the ticket names or clearly touches. For each, ask the
graph what ripples:
graphify affected "<symbol>"# reverse traversal: what breaks if this changes
graphify path "<A>""<B>"# how two things connect
graphify explain "<symbol>"# a node and its neighbors
Or via the MCP tools in an interactive session: get_pr_impact, query_graph,
get_neighbors, shortest_path, god_nodes. Record: how many nodes are impacted, whether any
god node (architectural hotspot) is in scope, and whether the change sits on a
boundary to another system. This is the decision driver — small local blast
radius vs. wide cross-module ripple is what separates the two exits below.
2 — Pattern match (vendored catalog, live fallback)
python3 "$DYFLO_HOME/dyflo/patterns/lookup.py""<ticket title + body + blast-radius summary>"
(DYFLO_HOME is the Dyflo repo path — install.sh stamps it in a comment at the
bottom of this file.)
A ranked hit (score ≥ threshold) → candidate pattern(s), each cited to a
canonical URL (GoF / Fowler PoEAA / microservices.io / Hohpe EIP).
A MISS → fall back to live retrieval for THIS ticket only: WebSearch and/or
context7 for current best-practice patterns. Do not scrape the catalog sources —
the vendored index already covers them; live retrieval is for genuinely novel shapes.
3 — Ponytail gate (mandatory — the escape hatch)
Security carve-out first: if the ticket or its blast radius touches auth,
secrets/credentials, or input validation, it stays hitl regardless of size —
small diff ≠ safe diff, and declining to downgrade is not escalation, so the
only-downgrades invariant holds. Run /security-review as part of the HITL pass.
Otherwise ask the ponytail question: does this change even need a
pattern? A small, local, single-module change with a tight blast radius and no
god node in scope does NOT. If so:
Emit NO_PATTERN with a one-line reason.
Relabel the ticket auto on the ticket source and hand it to the autonomous
lane. Stop. No ADR, no human gate.
(Per config: post a one-line note so the reclassification is visible.)
This gate is what keeps the research stage from becoming a ceremony generator that
staples "Strategy Pattern" onto a null check. Bias toward downgrading — most tickets
are small.
4 — Draft ADR (only if a pattern is warranted)
Delegate to the backend-architect agent if installed (design/trade-off analysis
is its job) — or, for a lightweight ticket, write it directly. The ADR uses the
adr.github.io format:
# ADR NNN: <title>## Status
Proposed <!-- becomes Accepted at the human gate -->
## Context<theticket'sneed, inoneparagraph>## Decision drivers (blast radius)<fromGraphify:impactednodes, godnodes, boundaries — citefile:line>## Decision
Adopt **<Pattern>** (<category>). <oneparagraphwhyitfitsTHISblastradius.>
Source: <canonicalURL>## Consequences<tradeoffs — pullthepattern's `tradeoff` lineandmakeitconcretehere>
Write it to docs/adr/NNN-<slug>.md in the repo (TRIP reads repo docs; a file on
disk is the clean seam). This ADR is both the research deliverable and the artifact
the human approves — it seeds /TRIP-1-plan.
5 — Hand to HITL
Surface the draft ADR for approval. On approval, /TRIP-1-plan <the ADR> picks it
up; the human gates then hold at plan and at diff, and /TRIP-3-release opens the PR.
Reference
$DYFLO_HOME/dyflo/patterns/catalog.json — vendored pattern index (4 canonical sources).
