Ideas Lifecycle

The ideas lifecycle is intentionally lightweight compared to the project workflow.

Levels

Ideas can be stored at two levels:

Project level (default) — .oat/ideas/ in the current project, gitignored
User level (global) — ~/.oat/ideas/ in the home directory, for ideas not tied to a specific project

All idea skills accept a --global flag to operate at user level. Without the flag, skills auto-detect the level by checking for an active idea pointer or existing ideas directory at each level.

Each level has its own independent backlog, scratchpad, and active-idea config value.

Flow

Quick capture: oat-idea-scratchpad to review or capture idea seeds
Start brainstorming: oat-idea-new (scaffolds directory, then invokes oat-idea-ideate)
Resume brainstorming: oat-idea-ideate (multiple sessions over time)
Finalize: oat-idea-summarize (generates summary, updates backlog)

Relationship to `oat-brainstorm`

The always-on oat-brainstorm skill (in the brainstorm tool pack) can feed into this workflow. When a brainstorming conversation converges on an ideas-pack destination, the dispatcher follows the same flow above and seeds it with the brainstorming session content:

Capture as new idea — runs oat-idea-new Steps 3-7 inline and pre-fills the new idea's discovery.md from the brainstorming payload (What's the Idea? from the synthesized summary + motivation, What Would It Look Like? from the vision, Open Questions from the conversation, plus a first session under Notes & Discussion headed ### Session: YYYY-MM-DD (seeded from oat-brainstorm)). The dispatcher then optionally chains into oat-idea-ideate Step 4 to keep brainstorming inside the idea, or stops with the session captured.
Extend existing idea — jumps straight to oat-idea-ideate Step 4 (Start New Session) on the chosen idea path and appends the brainstorming transcript as a new session under Notes & Discussion.
Summarize directly — fast path that runs the capture flow silently and then invokes oat-idea-summarize end-to-end, producing both the idea record and the summary in one shot. Only offered when the brainstorming conversation produced enough material to summarize directly.

oat-brainstorm sets activeIdea automatically when its destination lands in this workflow. If the brainstorming conversation converges on a non-ideas destination instead (scoped backlog item, new project, doc-to-path, inline), oat-brainstorm does not touch ideas — see Tool Packs for the full brainstorm pack reference.

Directory structure

# Project level
.oat/ideas/
├── backlog.md              # Aggregated list of all ideas
├── scratchpad.md           # Quick-capture pad for idea seeds
└── {idea-name}/
    ├── discovery.md        # Brainstorming document
    └── summary.md          # Generated when finalized

# User level (global) — same structure
~/.oat/ideas/
├── backlog.md
├── scratchpad.md
└── {idea-name}/
    ├── discovery.md
    └── summary.md

State model

Ideas track two states in discovery.md frontmatter:

brainstorming — actively being explored
summarized — finalized with a summary document

No state.md per idea. No HiLL gates. No knowledge base dependency.

Active idea

Each level stores the active idea in its config file:

Project level: activeIdea in .oat/config.local.json (gitignored)
User level: activeIdea in ~/.oat/config.json

Read/write via CLI: oat config get activeIdea / oat config set activeIdea <path>.

Ideas and projects use separate config keys and do not interfere with each other.

Scratchpad

The scratchpad is a checklist for capturing idea seeds quickly. Each entry supports nested bullets for quick notes:

- [ ] **{idea name}** - {brief summary} _(YYYY-MM-DD)_
  - {quick note}
  - {another note}

Use oat-idea-scratchpad to review entries or quick-capture new ones. When oat-idea-ideate runs without an active idea, it also shows scratchpad entries alongside existing ideas. Selecting a scratchpad entry scaffolds the idea inline.

Backlog

The backlog (backlog.md) aggregates all ideas in three sections:

Active Brainstorming — ideas currently being explored
Captured Ideas — summarized and ready for future consideration
Archived — completed, abandoned, or promoted to projects

Promotion to project

To promote a summarized idea to a Spec-Driven OAT project:

Run the oat-project-new skill with the idea name to scaffold the project
Run the oat-project-discover skill and use the idea's summary.md as the initial request
Update the ideas backlog entry to Archived with reason: promoted to project

If the work hasn't been summarized as an idea yet — or never was an idea to begin with — oat-brainstorm's "promote to a new OAT project" destination is a parallel route. The brainstorm dispatcher scaffolds the project via oat project new <slug> --mode <mode>, writes the seeded discovery.md directly from the brainstorming payload (Initial Request, Solution Space with approaches considered, Chosen Direction, Key Decisions, Open Questions), and stops with a pointer to oat-project-quick-start or oat-project-design. It deliberately writes discovery.md only — never a partial design.md — so the design phase keeps its full collaborative cadence.

Initialization

The ideas directory is created automatically by oat-idea-new or oat-idea-scratchpad on first use. Future: oat init ideas will scaffold the directory and copy idea skills into the project.

Reference artifacts

{IDEAS_ROOT}/backlog.md
{IDEAS_ROOT}/scratchpad.md
{IDEAS_ROOT}/{idea-name}/discovery.md
{IDEAS_ROOT}/{idea-name}/summary.md
.oat/templates/ideas/

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