Effective Flow

Effective Flow bundles complete lifecycle coverage as software-engineering workflow tools: from clarification through implementation to handover – invoked via /effective-flow <tool>, shipped as one skill for Claude Code and Codex, built from a single source.

Not a grab-bag of individual prompts, but a coherent set of tools that know one another: plan recommends the matching follow-up workflow; build, fix, refactor and docs share the same conventions for tests, review and completion; deliver turns confirmed local session changes into coherent commits on a fresh branch and opens a pull request; staged-only commit, commit-only pr and merge-gate remain focused tools for the steps through to the merge.

Why Effective Flow

• One tool for the whole cycle. investigate and plan clarify the task, build, fix, refactor, docs and maintain implement it, review checks it, deliver moves confirmed local changes through a fresh branch and coherent commits into a pull request, and the narrower commit and pr tools handle work that is already staged or committed. merge-gate drives an open pull request the rest of the way – answering automatic reviewers and merging once it is genuinely clean, but never past an open comment from an account other than the one it runs as – with no break between the phases.
• Thin router, lazy loading. Effective Flow loads only the tool catalog at startup; the full instruction of a tool arrives only on invocation. This keeps sessions lean and prevents the token limit from being exhausted by tools loaded up front.
• One source, two harnesses. Claude Code and Codex run with the same behavior, built from a single src/ tree into native direct-install targets and one portable manager target – no separate worker contracts that drift apart.
• Skill discovery instead of rigid preloading. Tools and agents detect at runtime which host skills are available and apply them situationally, instead of preloading a fixed list.
• Worktree and delivery when wanted. Implementation workflows can run in parallel in their own Git worktree and, at the end, merge automatically, leave a branch standing or open a pull request.
• Runs without configuration, grows with it. Effective Flow works right after installation; anyone who wants to control review depth, worktree behavior or issue-tracker integration does so through the living Effective Flow project-setup ADR. In a repository whose team has not adopted Effective Flow, setup hidden keeps the configuration, plans and concepts local and untracked, and leaves no trace in commits, branches or pull requests.

Language support

Effective Flow provides specialist implementation and review depth for frontend JavaScript/ TypeScript, Node.js backend/CLI code, and Rust. Other product languages use an automatic, clearly disclosed degraded mode: repository-native instructions, commands, tests, and nearby patterns guide a generic product implementer and qualitative reviewer. Tooling, CI, and configuration remain on a separate tooling-only route.

This is complete workflow lifecycle coverage, not a claim of equal language expertise. When a file’s role or a safe native command cannot be established, the workflow asks a focused question or reports the affected check as skipped; it does not guess or install a toolchain. See the language support matrix for details.

Quick start

Effective Flow is installed from the repository's built default-branch payload.

The preferred path is DALO:

dalo init
dalo target link claude
dalo target link codex
dalo source add-catalog effective-flow https://github.com/sebastian-software/effective-flow.git
dalo source select effective-flow effective-flow
dalo approve skill effective-flow:effective-flow --accept-risk "Effective Flow intentionally manages project configuration and automation."
dalo sync

Review DALO's audit findings before running the approval command; its reason records why you accept the persistence finding for this exact skill version. Link only the Claude Code or Codex target if you use one harness. As an alternative, install the same skill globally with Skills CLI 1.5.19; run the command for each target you use:

npx skills@1.5.19 add sebastian-software/effective-flow --agent claude-code --skill effective-flow --global --yes --copy
npx skills@1.5.19 add sebastian-software/effective-flow --agent codex --skill effective-flow --global --yes --copy

Both managers consume the same portable effective-flow/ candidate and its bundled worker contracts from the default branch.

Then, in Claude Code or Codex, call /effective-flow plan (Codex: $effective-flow plan) to start planning a first task. For a brand-new application whose shape is not settled yet, start one step earlier with /effective-flow concept.

Read on

• Usage: docs/user-guide/README.md – installation, tool reference, configuration, troubleshooting.
• Technical: docs/developer-guide/README.md – source-to-dist build, router concept, contributing to the project.

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