Orchestration Workflow

Caboose provides a six-step orchestration workflow designed to move from initial idea to merged pull request with confidence. Each step is implemented as a skill — a slash command you invoke directly in chat. The workflow is a loop, not a pipeline: you can enter at any point and revisit earlier steps as needed.

The Six Steps

1. /brainstorm — Explore the design space

Diverge-then-converge ideation. Caboose generates multiple candidate approaches for a given problem, evaluates tradeoffs, and narrows down to a recommended direction. Use this when requirements are ambiguous or the solution space is large.

2. /plan — Build a granular implementation plan

Produces a step-by-step plan with specific file targets, ordered tasks, and acceptance criteria. The plan becomes a living checklist that Caboose tracks throughout execution.

3. Execute — Work through the plan

This is the core work phase. Caboose processes plan tasks one at a time — reading files, writing code, running commands — and marks each task complete as it goes. Context management happens automatically:

• Compaction summarizes the conversation when the context window fills up.
• Cold storage offloads older segments to SQLite so the session can continue indefinitely.
• Handoff allows transferring a session summary to a new context when needed.

4. /review — Iterative code review

Applies the Rule of Five: Caboose reviews the changes up to five times, each pass focusing on progressively finer-grained concerns (architecture, correctness, edge cases, style, polish). Issues found in earlier passes are resolved before moving to the next.

5. /finish — Quality gates and delivery

Runs final quality checks, produces a diff audit, creates a commit with a well-structured message, and opens a pull request. This is the “ship it” step.

6. /handoff — Session continuity

Generates a compact summary of the current session — decisions made, files changed, open questions — so that a future session (or a different context window) can pick up where you left off without losing institutional knowledge.

Entering the Loop

You are not required to start at /brainstorm. If you already know the approach, start with /plan. If the code is already written and you want a review, jump straight to /review. The workflow adapts to where you are in the development process.

/brainstorm → /plan → execute → /review → /finish → /handoff
     ↑                                          |
     └──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Each skill is self-contained but aware of the others. A /plan output feeds naturally into execution, and /review knows how to read the task list from a prior /plan. This composability is what makes the loop practical for real work.