The CodeOps workflow

CodeOps is recursive rather than strictly linear. Later evidence can reopen an earlier decision, invalidate affected downstream work, and require a fresh review.

Stage	Primary skill	Durable outcome
Clarify the idea	grill-me	Confirmed decisions and constraints
Discover requirements	make-requirements	Numbered requirement documents
Reconstruct existing behavior	retro-requirements	Confidence-classified reconstruction brief
Challenge an artifact	preflight	Severity-ranked findings and rulings
Design implementation	make-plan	Specifications, testing strategy, and execution plan
Execute safely	exec-plan	Verified tasks, review evidence, and commits as authorized
Track the portfolio	roadmap	Derived feature and portfolio status
Maintain architecture knowledge	techdocs	Architecture guides and decision records

The normal greenfield sequence

setup-codeops
  → make-requirements
  → preflight requirements
  → make-plan
  → preflight plan
  → exec-plan
  → roadmap

Use grill-me before requirements when the initial idea contains major unresolved design branches. For an existing codebase, begin with retro-requirements and triage observed behavior before turning it into requirements.

Why gates can reopen

A plan may reveal that a requirement did not define a failure mode. A specification test may expose an incompatible contract. Implementation may uncover repository behavior that contradicts the plan. CodeOps sends that discovery back to its authoritative artifact instead of inventing a local assumption.

This is the central safety property: downstream progress never makes an upstream ambiguity true.