| name | viper |
| description | VIPER — phased development workflow. Discovery entry point listing the five phase skills. |
VIPER is a five-phase development workflow: Vision → Investigate → Plan → Execute → Review.
Vision is optional. For clear-cut work you can start directly at Investigate — the Investigate skill will confirm before skipping ideation. Investigate, Plan, Execute, and Review are required.
Use one of the phase skills:
/viper-1-vision — (optional) brainstorm with subagents, converge on a direction
/viper-2-investigate — truth-find the codebase and external dependencies
/viper-3-plan — produce hierarchical plan with parallel-execution metadata
/viper-4-execute — implement, optionally fanning tasks out to parallel subagents
/viper-5-review — guided demo walkthrough
All phase artifacts live under .viper/NNN-<slug>/.
Working rhythm — pause between chunks
VIPER is collaborative, not autonomous. Pause for user confirmation at every meaningful chunk boundary — between subagent returns, between Features within a phase, between phases, and whenever a decision branches the work. Use AskUserQuestion (or a plain question in chat) to surface what just happened and what comes next.
- "Keep going without stopping" is never standing consent for the next chunk. The user agreeing to one step does not authorize the next.
- A "chunk" is roughly: one subagent return, one Feature, one phase, or any decision that closes off options.
- Even if the next step seems obvious, pause and name it before doing it. Surprises cost more than the few seconds of confirmation.
- If you find yourself thinking "the user said keep going" — re-read the last user message. They almost certainly meant the current step, not the next one.
This rhythm is the difference between the user trusting your output and the user re-reading every diff. Prefer many small confirmations over one big "tada".