UB Workflow

Source: .agents/skills/ub-workflow/SKILL.md

ub-workflow is the planning and delivery skill. It decides whether work can stay direct, needs a lightweight spec, or should become a full initiative with roadmap, prepared sprints, closeouts, final audit, and retained notes.

For the detailed lane and mode model, read the UB Workflow deep dive.

Core Principles

• Choose the smallest safe planning lane before opening durable artifacts.
• Promote out of chat-only state when assumptions, options, validation, or staged execution need to survive handoff.
• Treat lightweight specs as a real lane, not a weak initiative.
• Treat initiative roadmaps as the durable post-plan artifact.
• Do not start sprint execution from placeholder-only sprint shells.
• In reviewed mode, preview before execution and wait for explicit approval.
• End initiatives with final audit, retained note, and human review before archive.

Behavior In Practice

• Makes the lane choice visible: direct bounded work, lightweight spec, or initiative. It promotes out of direct work when planning, assumptions, options, validation, or handoff state need a durable record.
• Uses lightweight specs for bounded work that still needs a written contract. A spec is not treated as a failed initiative; it is the right lane for medium planning that should remain small.
• Uses initiatives when the work needs PRD-level decomposition, roadmap sequencing, resumable sprint execution, final audit, and retained memory.
• Keeps prd.md self-contained before generating roadmap.md, then treats roadmap.md as the durable progress surface for resume.
• Separates preparation from execution. Sprint folders or placeholder shells are not enough; each sprint needs standalone content before it can start.
• Preserves human control in reviewed mode: next-sprint requests open a preview first, and execution waits for one explicit start approval.
• Tracks mode differences without weakening gates: flow reduces pre-work ceremony, auto advances unless interrupted, and continuous or yolo removes routine pause points while still requiring internal artifact updates.
• Ends with a final audit, retained note, and archive decision instead of leaving the last sprint as the only memory of the initiative.

Reference Highlights

• .agents/skills/ub-workflow/references/workflow-contract.md: lifecycle, lane promotion, interaction modes, reviewed-mode checkpoints, execution rules, pause behavior, and resume order.
• .agents/skills/ub-workflow/references/artifact-contracts.md: required contents for initiative roots, lightweight specs, sprint PRDs, decision logs, closeouts, rollups, retained notes, and archive-ready state.
• .agents/skills/ub-workflow/references/validation-and-completion.md: gate readiness, closeout evidence, final-audit expectations, and completion criteria.
• .agents/skills/ub-workflow/references/scaffold-helper.md: deterministic scaffold helper behavior, operation-root bootstrapping, safe rerun rules, and placeholder handling.
• .agents/skills/ub-workflow/references/governance-bridge.md: how workflow artifacts coordinate with governance evidence only when explicit escalation is in scope.

Progressive Disclosure

The main skill is enough for lane choice and ordinary workflow routing. The references load when the task reaches a specific phase: artifact creation, roadmap readiness, sprint closeout, helper use, placeholder validation, or explicit governance alignment.

This keeps small bounded work light while giving large initiatives a durable operating system.

Common Invocation Examples

• “Use ub-workflow to turn this idea into the right planning surface.”
• “Create a lightweight spec for this bounded change.”
• “Scaffold an initiative from this PRD.”
• “Prepare the next sprint, but do not start execution yet.”
• “Explain the difference between reviewed mode and yolo mode.”

Boundaries

Do not use it for governance-only evidence decisions. Use ub-governance for gate semantics, evidence depth, testing posture, and ADR escalation.

Tradeoffs

Strength: prevents large work from living only in chat history and gives later operators a reliable resume path.

Cost: initiatives add process and should be reserved for work that benefits from staged execution.

Deep Dive

See UB Workflow deep dive for lane choice, interaction modes, initiative lifecycle, and approval checkpoints.