Lifecycle

This lifecycle is an optional OAT layer. Interop-only users can skip it.

OAT lifecycle order:

Discovery (oat-project-discover)
Spec (oat-project-spec)
Design (oat-project-design)
Plan (oat-project-plan)
Implement (oat-project-implement)
Review loop (oat-project-review-provide / oat-project-review-receive)
Summary (oat-project-summary) — generates summary.md as institutional memory; oat-project-pr-final and oat-project-complete auto-refresh it when missing or stale
PR (oat-project-pr-progress / oat-project-pr-final) — sets pr_open status
Revision loop (oat-project-revise) — optional; accepts post-PR feedback
Documentation sync (oat-project-document) — optional; reads project artifacts and code evidence to identify docs needing updates, checks for missing coverage of newly shipped capability areas, checks tools.project-management, and auto-runs oat-pjm-update-repo-reference before scanning docs when the project-management pack is installed
Complete (oat-project-complete)

Shortcut: oat-project-next reads project state and invokes the correct next skill automatically — use it instead of remembering which skill comes next. Complements oat-project-progress (which is read-only diagnostic).

Full spec-driven design supports three interaction modes: collaborative, selective collaborative, and draft-and-review. Selective collaborative drafts routine sections silently and presents high-risk or uncertain sections for live review. Quick-start lightweight design stays simpler and offers only collaborative or draft-and-review. See Design Modes for details.

Quick Look

What it does: explains the end-to-end lifecycle for tracked OAT projects, including alternate quick and import lanes.
When to use it: when you need the actual project execution model, not just a high-level overview of workflow mode.
Primary entry points: oat-project-new, oat-project-quick-start, oat-project-import-plan, oat-project-implement

Lifecycle Map

Post-implementation flow

After implementation and final review pass:

Summary (oat-project-summary) — generates summary.md as institutional memory from project artifacts; PR-final and completion will auto-refresh it if you have not already run it or if it is stale
Documentation (oat-project-document) — optional sync of project docs; now uses the shared tools.project-management config signal to decide whether repo-reference refresh should run before docs analysis, and should recommend new docs pages/directories when the shipped work introduces a capability area that the docs app does not already cover
PR (oat-project-pr-final) — creates PR description (auto-refreshes summary.md first when needed, then uses it as source), sets oat_phase_status: pr_open, and tracks actual PR existence with oat_pr_status / oat_pr_url
Revision loop (oat-project-revise) — accepts post-PR feedback:
- Inline feedback creates p-revN revision phases with prevN-tNN task IDs
- GitHub PR feedback delegates to oat-project-review-receive-remote
- Review artifacts delegate to oat-project-review-receive
- After revision tasks complete, state returns to pr_open
Complete (oat-project-complete) — accepts any phase status (pr_open, complete, in_progress), auto-refreshes summary.md before closeout when needed, and always archives the project locally

Completion archive behavior

On completion, OAT now treats archive handling as part of the closeout lifecycle:

Local archive is always written to .oat/projects/archived/<project>/.
If .oat/config.json enables archive.s3SyncOnComplete and sets archive.s3Uri, completion also attempts an S3 upload for a dated snapshot such as <archive.s3Uri>/<repo-slug>/projects/20260401-<project>/.
If .oat/config.json sets archive.awsProfile and/or archive.awsRegion, those values are forwarded to every aws invocation triggered by completion (preflight checks + aws s3 sync) and override any ambient shell AWS_PROFILE / AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE / AWS_REGION / AWS_DEFAULT_REGION values. The repo's archive-scoped credentials are treated as deliberate intent so users don't have to unset shell env vars before running completion. See config-and-local-state for the full precedence chain.
If .oat/config.json sets archive.summaryExportPath, completion copies summary.md to <archive.summaryExportPath>/20260401-<project>.md.
Missing or unusable AWS CLI configuration produces warnings during completion instead of blocking closeout.
oat project archive sync can later sync all archived projects, or one named archived project, back down from S3; it selects the latest dated remote snapshot and materializes it into the local bare archive tree.

Phase status: `pr_open`

After oat-project-pr-final runs, state.md shows oat_phase_status: pr_open. This signals:

The project is in its post-PR review posture
The project is NOT done — agents should not start a new project
Next steps: oat-project-revise (for feedback) or oat-project-complete (when approved)

Actual PR existence is tracked separately from oat_phase_status:

oat_pr_status records whether the PR is merely ready to create, open, closed, or merged
oat_pr_url records the tracked PR URL when a PR exists

This distinction matters during completion: oat-project-complete can skip the "Open a PR?" prompt when oat_pr_status: open is already present.

Auto-review at HiLL checkpoints

When workflow.autoReviewAtHillCheckpoints is enabled or plan.md frontmatter sets oat_auto_review_at_hill_checkpoints, completing a HiLL checkpoint automatically runs the extra lifecycle review scoped to every implementation phase not already covered by a passed whole-phase code review, through the just-completed checkpoint. Mid-implementation multi-phase reviews use inclusive phase-range scopes such as p02-p03; the final implementation checkpoint uses code final. The review uses auto-disposition mode (minors auto-converted to fix tasks, no user prompts). Disabled by default. Legacy autoReviewAtCheckpoints and oat_auto_review_at_checkpoints are still read as fallbacks. This does not control Tier 1 per-phase oat-reviewer gates.

Implementation modes

oat-project-implement v2.0 dispatches one subagent per phase (not per task). Capability detection at skill start selects a tier, locked for the run:

Tier 1 (subagents): native subagent dispatch via Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex with spawn authorization.
Tier 2 (inline): orchestrator reads the agent files and executes the process itself when subagents are unavailable or authorization is declined.

Within either tier, parallelism is expressed as plan metadata:

Sequential (default): plans with no oat_plan_parallel_groups field, or with an empty array. Phases run in plan order on the orchestration branch.
Parallel groups: phases listed together in oat_plan_parallel_groups run concurrently in worktrees (Tier 1 only) and merge back to the orchestration branch in plan order. Groups themselves execute sequentially.

See Implementation Execution for the full execution model — tier detection, bounded fix loop, fan-in, merge-conflict handling, dry-run, and resumption.

Review receive behavior

oat-project-review-receive now presents a findings overview before asking for any disposition decisions.
Findings are shown with stable IDs by severity (C*, I*, M*, m*) so follow-up choices map clearly to specific items.
For each finding, the receive step summarizes the reviewer note, adds agent analysis, and gives a recommendation (convert now vs defer with rationale).

Alternate lifecycle lanes

Quick lane diagram

oat-project-quick-start (adaptive discovery — provide a project name and optional description; if only the name is provided, quick-start asks for the missing description before discovery. Well-understood requests synthesize quickly, exploratory requests invest in solution space exploration. Before scaffolding, the skill checks inherited git state and asks whether to commit, proceed, or abort when the worktree is already dirty.)
Decision point: straight to plan, optional lightweight design.md, or promote to spec-driven
Implement: oat-project-implement (sequential by default; parallel when oat_plan_parallel_groups is declared)
oat-project-review-provide / oat-project-pr-final
Optional oat-project-promote-spec-driven to backfill spec-driven lifecycle artifacts in-place

Import lane diagram

oat-project-import-plan (checks inherited git state before import scaffolding so sync-generated or unrelated dirty files do not silently roll into project bookkeeping)
Implement: oat-project-implement (sequential by default; parallel when oat_plan_parallel_groups is declared)
oat-project-review-provide / oat-project-pr-final
Optional oat-project-promote-spec-driven to switch project mode to spec-driven lifecycle

Lane diagrams

Spec-Driven workflow lane

During the Design step, oat-project-design asks how to work through the document unless a mode was selected by argument, environment, or workflow.designMode. The three full-design choices are collaborative, selective collaborative, and draft-and-review.

Before a plan is marked ready for implementation, planning resolves the current provider's dispatch ceiling from workflow.dispatchCeiling.<provider> or project state.md frontmatter. If no ceiling is configured and the session is interactive, planning asks once and stores the answer as oat_dispatch_ceiling; non-interactive planning leaves it unresolved so implementation preflight can fail before work starts with setup instructions.

Quick lane

Quick lane lightweight design intentionally keeps a smaller collaborative/draft choice. Selective collaborative becomes available only after promotion into the full spec-driven design lane.

Quick-start follows the same dispatch ceiling rule at the plan boundary: capture it when interactive, persist it to project state, and avoid any mid-implementation ceiling prompt.

Import lane

Capture lane

Retroactive project creation for work done outside the OAT project workflow. Common scenario: mobile/cloud sessions where you brainstorm and implement with an agent, then want to open a PR and review from your desktop.

Entry point: /oat-project-capture (skill-only, no CLI command — requires agent conversation context).

Key differences from other lanes:

No plan generation — the work is already done; the scaffold-created plan.md template is kept but not authored
Discovery from conversation — discovery.md captures intent and decisions from the agent's conversation context, not from requirements analysis
Implementation from commits — implementation.md is populated from commit history with SHAs, not from executing plan tasks
Lifecycle state is user-chosen — user decides whether the project is ready for review or still in progress

Artifact progression

discovery.md -> spec.md -> design.md -> plan.md -> implementation.md -> summary.md

Quick lane progression:

discovery.md -> [design.md (optional lightweight)] -> plan.md -> implementation.md

Import lane progression:

references/imported-plan.md -> plan.md -> implementation.md (spec.md/design.md optional)

Capture lane progression:

discovery.md (from conversation) + implementation.md (from commits) — no forward-looking artifacts

Operational rules

Keep state.md, plan.md, and implementation.md synchronized.
Stop at configured HiLL checkpoints.
Do not move lifecycle forward when required review gates are unresolved.
Project entry skills (oat-project-new, oat-project-quick-start, and oat-project-import-plan) surface inherited dirty git state before scaffolding. If the dirty list includes .oat/sync/manifest.json, .claude/, .cursor/, or .codex/, the skill calls out that those paths are typically sync output and offers Commit now, Proceed anyway, or Abort.

Reducing lifecycle friction with workflow preferences

The lifecycle has several interactive prompts that power users often answer the same way every time — HiLL checkpoint behavior, archive on complete, auto-create PR, post-implementation chaining, final review execution model, and re-review scope narrowing. These can be configured once via workflow.* preference keys and respected automatically by skills.

See the Workflow preferences section in the Configuration guide for the full list of keys and how to set them. Preferences resolve through a three-layer chain (env > repo-local > repo-shared > user > default), so you can set personal defaults at user scope once and override per-repo only when needed.

Active project resolution

Active project state is stored in .oat/config.local.json (activeProject, repo-relative path).
Projects root is stored in .oat/config.json (projects.root) and can be read via oat config get projects.root.
Workflow skills prefer oat config get activeProject / oat config get projects.root rather than reading pointer files directly.

Brainstorming integration with the project lifecycle

oat-brainstorm (in the brainstorm tool pack) interacts with the project lifecycle in two distinct ways: it can seed a brand new project from a brainstorming conversation when no project is active, or fold back into an active project when one is.

Seeding a new project from a brainstorm

When the brainstorming destination is "promote to a new OAT project", the dispatcher confirms a project slug and a mode (quick vs spec-driven) with the user, runs oat project new <slug> --mode <mode> to scaffold the project, and writes the new project's discovery.md directly from the brainstorming payload — Initial Request, Solution Space with approaches considered, Chosen Direction, Key Decisions, Open Questions. It writes discovery.md only (never a partial design.md), so the design phase keeps its full collaborative cadence and consumes the brainstorm's architectural intent from discovery's Solution Space and Chosen Direction sections during approach reaffirmation. The dispatcher stops with a pointer to oat-project-quick-start or oat-project-design — it deliberately does not auto-chain into the next phase, so the user makes that transition consciously.

This is a parallel entry path into the Spec-Driven and Quick lanes, not a new lane: the resulting project follows the normal lane it was scaffolded into. The brainstorm-as-seed step is what changes — the user arrives at oat-project-quick-start (or oat-project-design) with discovery already populated rather than starting from a blank discovery template.

Folding back into an active project

When oat-brainstorm fires while a project is active, it offers a 3-way picker before any pack-filtered destination shows up:

Related to the project → fold the synthesized brainstorming content back into the most-specific upstream artifact (design.md if it exists, otherwise discovery.md), commit immediately, and print a handoff prompt for the right plan-authoring skill (oat-project-plan for spec-driven, oat-project-quick-start for quick, oat-project-revise when an open PR exists). The fold-back commit is safety-gated: a preflight git status --porcelain -- "$ARTIFACT_PATH" checks for dirty state, staging is exactly git add -- "$ARTIFACT_PATH" (never -A, never globs), and the handoff prompt only prints after the scoped commit succeeds.
Independent of the project → the active project is acknowledged but doesn't constrain the picker; brainstorm routes through its standard pack-filtered terminal-state options (new project, backlog item, idea, doc-to-path, inline).
Related but supplementary → write a brainstorming reference file at .oat/projects/<scope>/<project>/brainstorming/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md, alongside pr/ and reviews/. No lifecycle artifact is touched.

The fold-back path is what makes "we got to plan and realized the design missed something" recoverable mid-project: the upstream artifact gets updated and committed cleanly, then the user re-runs plan authoring with a "don't refresh, integrate" context that preserves review-table state.

Reference artifacts

.oat/projects/<scope>/<project>/spec.md
.oat/projects/<scope>/<project>/design.md
.oat/projects/<scope>/<project>/plan.md
.oat/projects/<scope>/<project>/implementation.md

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