Development Workflow

Hyprlayer provides a structured, spec-driven development workflow. Each step produces artifacts in the thoughts directory that persist across sessions and are shared with your team.

The Workflow

Research → Plan → Implement → Validate → 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. This creates a persistent knowledge base that future sessions can reference.

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.

Plans are saved to thoughts/shared/plans/ and can be refined 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 updates checkboxes in the plan as sections are completed.

When to use: After a plan has been reviewed and approved.

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 that all phases were completed correctly, runs tests, and identifies any 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. 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 thoughts directory for repos that don’t use it
• _generic (/create_plan_generic) — Generic version for use outside of Hyprlayer

See Command Variants for details.