run-workflow

name	run-workflow
description	Workflow Skill: Runs the full SDLC workflow on one or more tickets — planning → building → reviewing → testing. Auto-chains agents with retry on rejection. Stops at shipping (use bobby run ship to create PRs/merge). MANDATORY TRIGGERS: workflow, run workflow, work tickets, work the board, auto, full workflow, end to end.
argument-hint	<ticket ID(s) to workflow>

Bobby Workflow Skill

Orchestrates the ticket lifecycle: planning → building → reviewing → testing. Auto-chains agents and retries on rejection. Stops at shipping — use bobby run ship separately to create PRs and merge.

Before Starting

1. Ticket selection — If ticket IDs were provided as arguments, use those. Otherwise, discover and present tickets: a) Run bobby ticket list planning and bobby ticket list backlog to find tickets ready to start b) Run bobby ticket list building, bobby ticket list reviewing, bobby ticket list testing to find in-progress tickets that can be resumed c) Present the results to the user in two groups:

   Ready to start:

   Ticket	Title	Stage
   ...	...	backlog/planning

   Resumable (in progress):

   Ticket	Title	Stage
   ...	...	building/reviewing/testing

   d) Ask the user which tickets to workflow (specific IDs or "all") e) Wait for the user's response before proceeding. Do not auto-select.

2. Branch guard — Run git branch --show-current. If on main/master, create a feature branch: git checkout -b tkt-{first-ticket-ID}. NEVER commit directly to main/master.

Safety Limits

• Max retries per ticket: 3 (when an agent rejects, loop back to building)
• Max total agent invocations: 20 (across all tickets — stop and report if hit)

Workflow Stages

Stage	Agent	What it does
planning	bobby-plan	Creates plan.md + test-cases.md
building	bobby-build	Implements the plan, commits code
reviewing	bobby-review	Code review — runs tests, lint, checks ACs
testing	bobby-test	Live app verification — browser + API testing

Note: Shipping is handled separately via bobby run ship. The workflow stops once a ticket reaches the shipping stage.

Orchestration Process

For each ticket, sequentially:

1. Read Ticket State

Read .bobby/tickets/{ID}*/ticket.md frontmatter to determine the current stage.

2. Run the Right Agent

Based on the current stage, launch the corresponding agent:

• If stage is backlog: move to planning first (bobby ticket move {ID} plan), then run bobby-plan
• If stage is planning: run bobby-plan agent
• If stage is building: run bobby-build agent
• If stage is reviewing: run bobby-review agent
• If stage is testing: run bobby-test agent
• If stage is shipping: this ticket is complete — skip to the next ticket

For each agent:

1. Claim the ticket: bobby ticket assign {ID} {agent-name}
2. Read .bobby/tickets/{ID}*/ticket.md for context
3. CRITICAL: Read and follow .claude/agents/{agent-name}.md end-to-end — this file IS the agent's workflow. Do not improvise.
4. When complete, the agent updates the ticket stage via bobby ticket move

3. Check Result

After each agent completes:

1. Look for <bobby:done ticket="..." stage="..." /> in the output — this signals the new stage
2. If not present, re-read ticket.md frontmatter as fallback
3. Run git status --short — if there are uncommitted source files, the agent failed to commit. STOP and report.

4. Advance or Retry

• Stage advanced → continue to the next agent
• Stage went back to building (rejection) → run bobby-build again. The build agent reads rejection comments to understand what to fix. Max retries: 3
• Stage is shipping → this ticket's workflow is complete. Move to the next ticket. To ship, run bobby run ship separately.
• Stage is blocked → stop this ticket, report the blocker, move to next ticket
• Max retries exceeded → stop this ticket, report failure, move to next ticket

5. Next Ticket

Repeat for each ticket in the queue.

After All Tickets

1. Report the final status of each ticket
2. Run bobby sync to commit ticket state changes to the umbrella repo
3. If any tickets reached shipping, remind the user: Run bobby run ship to create PRs and merge.

Key Principles

• Use agent files, not inline prompts — always tell subagents to read their .md agent file. Never write custom inline instructions that bypass standardized agent behavior.
• One ticket at a time — process sequentially, don't parallelize workflow stages
• Trust agent decisions — if an agent rejects, don't override it
• Clean workspace — verify git status after each agent
• Stop on confusion — if a ticket is in an unexpected state, stop and report rather than guessing
• Never auto-ship — workflow stops at shipping; user triggers bobby run ship when ready

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Project overrides

If .claude/skills/bobby-workflow/SKILL.local.md exists, read it and follow it. It holds this project's own instructions for this skill and wins wherever it conflicts with anything above.

SKILL.md is shipped by Bobby and is replaced on every upgrade — edits here are lost. SKILL.local.md is yours and is never overwritten.