choosing-a-workflow

Choosing a Workflow

The root router of the workflow family in packages/pi-thinkrail-workflow. It classifies new workflow-eligible work and names the workflow skill that governs it — nothing more. Work already routed resumes its active workflow instead. A routed skill's steps live in that skill alone; read it, don't run it from memory.

Classify

For a new piece of work, read the request and use what is already known to answer three questions:

1. Is this project onboarding? No spec graph yet — an empty or effectively empty workspace where the user brings a raw idea, or an existing codebase being set up or specced for the first time.
2. Is this the PR lifecycle? Finished work shipping as a pull request, or an existing PR being tended — created, brought up to date, given screenshots, its checks watched, or its review comments addressed. Fixes that flow from a PR's own review comments belong here.
3. Does the work require a product or design choice? The request leaves scope, user-visible behavior, or architecture to decide before implementation.

If none applies, no workflow is needed: proceed directly without a workflow announcement. A fully specified fix, mechanical refactor, documentation or configuration-only change, question, explanation, or check normally belongs here.

If the route is genuinely ambiguous from the request alone, ask one short clarifying question (ask_user_question, composed per the asking-user-questions concept skill) rather than guessing.

Route

Classification	Route
Project onboarding — no spec graph yet	Read and follow setting-up-a-project
PR lifecycle work	Read and follow shipping-a-pr
A change requiring a product or design choice	Read and follow brainstorming
None of the above	No matching workflow; proceed directly without announcing the routing result

One route per piece of work. If a request bundles unfinished implementation with PR work, route the implementation first and return to shipping-a-pr only after it lands.

Red flags — stop and re-route

• You started implementation while a required product or architecture choice is still unresolved.
• You loaded brainstorming for work whose observable result and implementation constraints are already specified.
• You re-entered this router while continuing work already assigned to a workflow.
• You are following a routed skill's steps from memory instead of reading that skill.

Handoff

This skill ends by naming exactly one of: setting-up-a-project, shipping-a-pr, brainstorming, or no matching workflow (proceed directly). Adding a workflow to the family adds a row to the table above — see the writing-workflow-skills skill.